Evolutionary sequence divergence within repeated DNA families of higher plant genomes. I. Analysis of reassociation kinetics.

The higher proportion of repeated DNA sequences in the garden pea (Pisum sativum) than in the mung bean (Vigna radiata), as well as other differences between these legume genomes, are consistent with a higher rate of sequence amplification in the former. This hypothesis leads to a prediction that repeated sequence families in Pisum are mostly heterogeneous, as defined by Bendich and Anderson (1977), while Vigna families are homogeneous. An assay developed by these authors to distinguish between the two types of families, by comparison of reassociation rates at different temperatures, was utilized. The results for Vigna defied the predictions of the assay for either homogeneous or heterogeneous model. Evaluation of the kinetic data in light of the great diversity of repeated family copy numbers in both genomes enabled an interpretation of the results as consistent with heterogeneous families in Pisum and homogeneous families in Vigna. These tentative conclusions were supported by the results of a thermal denaturation (melting) assay described in the accompanying paper.