Similarity of the Cin1 repetitive family of Zea mays to eukaryotic transposable elements.

It has been suggested that the middle repetitive class of sequences that make up a large proportion of the eukaryotic genome have been amplified and dispersed by DNA transposition. Transposition is a phenomenon first postulated by Barbara McClintock on the basis of her genetic analysis of mutants in Zea mays. Since then, DNA transposition has been studied genetically in various plant systems and is well documented on the molecular level in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. This has included the isolation of DNA inserts at various loci in several plants; however, the prevalence of transposition in plants is not established. We report here DNA nucleotide sequence data which show that some members of the Cin1 middle repetitive family of maize have features characteristic of known transposable elements. One cloned Cin1 repeat has a 6-base pair (bp) perfect inverted repeat sequence at its ends. The terminal five base pairs (5' TGTTG . . . CAACA 3') are identical to the termini of Drosophila copia transposable elements. Two other Cin1 alleles are flanked by 5-bp direct repeats. A comparison is made with the long terminal repeat (LTR) of the copia-Ty1-retrovirus families of moveable genetic elements.