Molecular and genomic organization of clusters of repetitive DNA sequences in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Repetitive sequences in Caenorhabditis elegans are interspersed along the holocentric chromosomes. We have physically mapped some of these repetitive families and found that, although the distribution of members of each family is relatively even along the chromosomes, members of more than one family tend to cluster in some locations. We compared the sequence organization of 11 clusters located at known positions on different chromosomes in the N2 strain. These studies allow a comparison between repetitive elements belonging to the same family that are located on the same or on different chromosomes, providing an important tool in the study of genome turnover and evolution.