The Ds1 controlling element family in maize and Tripsacum.

Hybridization experiments indicated that the maize genome contains a family of sequences closely related to the Ds1 element originally characterized from the Adh1-Fm335 allele of maize. Examples of these Ds1-related segments were cloned and sequenced. They also had the structural properties of mobile genetic elements, i.e., similar length and internal sequence homology with Ds1, 10- or 11-bp terminal inverted repeats, and characteristic duplications of flanking genomic DNA. All sequences with 11-bp terminal inverted repeats were flanked by 8-bp duplications, but the duplication flanking one sequence with 10-bp inverted repeats was only 6 bp. Similar Ds1-related sequences were cloned from Tripsacum dactyloides. They showed no more divergence from the maize sequences than the individual maize sequences showed when compared with each other. No consensus sequence was evident for the sites at which these sequences had inserted in genomic DNA.