Summary
Thirty-eight accessions from Zea and 20 accessions from related genera were probed for the presence of Bs1, a retrotransposon originally found in maize. All maize and teosinte plants tested show the presence of Bs1 in one to five densely hybridizing bands. The mean copy numbers of Bs1 elements among the maize and teosinte accessions were similar: 2.92 and 3.25, respectively, with no large differences between any subgroups. Most exotic maize samples exhibited two common bands of 7.8 kb and 4.7 kb. Section Zea teosintes (but not teosintes of section Luxuriantes) also show the presence of a common band of the same size as the smaller common band in maize. At reduced stringency, Tripsacum dactyloides exhibited a single hybridizing band at 6.9 kb. Results argue for the evolution of maize from a mexicana or parviglumis teosinte, and the evolution of the Bs1 element within the tribe Andropogoneae. Additionally, recombinant inbred lines were probed for the presence of Bs1, in order to map the chromosomal locations of Bs1 elements in four different maize lines. Two of the recombinant inbred parental lines had an element (Bs1-F) on chromosome 5, while the other two lines had an element (Bs1-S) on chromosome 8. Restriction site polymorphisms have apparently arisen in the vicinity of Bs1-S since its insertion. Segregation analysis of other lines was also performed; the data indicate that Bs1 has the distribution expected of a transposable element, different locations in different lines, and not that of a fixed gene locus. However, the common bands in the Zea mays lines and the recombinant inbred data imply that Bs1 is not highly mobile.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alleman M, Freeling M (1986) The Mu transposable elements of maize: evidence for transposition and copy number regulation during development. Genetics 112:107–119
Bennetzen JL (1987) Covalent DNA modification and the regulation of Mutator element transposition in maize. Mol Gen Genet 208:45–51
Boeke JD, Garfinkel DJ, Styles CA, Fink GR (1985) Ty elements transpose through an RNA intermediate. Cell 40:285–294
Burr B, Burr FA, Thompson KH, Albertson MC, Stuber CW (1988) Gene mapping with recombinant inbreds in maize. Genetics 118:519–526
Doebley JF, Iltis HH (1980) Taxonomy of Zea (Gramineae). I. A subgeneric classification with key to taxa. Am J Bot 98:982–983
Doolittle RF, Feng DF, Johnson MS, McClure MA (1989) Origins and evolutionary relationships of retroviruses. Q Rev Biol 64:1–30
Feinberg A, Vogelstein B (1982) A technique for radiolabeling DNA restriction endonuclease fragments to high specific activity. Anal Biochem 132:6–13
Galinat WC (1988) The origin of corn. In: Sprague GF, Dudley JW (eds) Corn and Corn improvement. American Society of Agronomy, Madison WI, pp 1–31
Gould F, Shaw R (1968) Grass systematics, 2nd edn. Texas A&M University Press, College Station/TX
Grandbastien MA, Spielmann A, Caboche M (1989) Int1, a mobile retrovirus-like transposable element of tobacco isolated by plant cell genetics. Nature 337:376–380
Hitchcock AS (1935) Manual to the grasses of the United States. US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Iltis HH, Doebley JF (1980) Taxonomy of Zea mays complex and a generic synopsis. Am J Bot 67:982:993
Jin Y-K, Bennetzen JL (1989) The structure and coding properties of Bs1, a maize retrovirus-like transposon. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 86:6235–6239
Johns MA, Mottinger J, Freeling M (1985) A low copy number copia-like transposon in maize. EMBO J 4:1093–1102
Johns MA, Babcock MS, Fuerstenberg SM, Fuerstenberg SI, Freeling M, Simpson RB (1989) An unusually compact retrotransposon in maize. Plant Mol Biol 12:633–642
Kochetkov NK, Budovski EI (1972) Organic chemistry of nucleic acids. Plenum, London, pp 477–532
Kupiec M, Petes TD (1988) Allelic and ectopic recombination between Ty elements in yeast. Genetics 119:549–559
Maniatis T, Fritsch EF, Sambrook J (1982) Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor/NY
Mangelsdorf PC (1986) The origin of corn. Sci Am 255:80–86
Montgomery E, Charlesworth B, Langley CH (1987) A test for the role of natural selection in the stabilization of copy number in a population of Drosophila melanogaster. Genet Res 49:31–41
Mottinger JP, Johns MA, Freeling M (1984) Mutations of the Adh1 gene in maize following infection with barley stripe mosaic virus. Mol Gen Genet 195:367–369
Rhoades MM, Dempsey E (1982) The induction of mutable systems in plants with the high-loss mechanism. Maize Genet Coop Newsl 56:21–26
Roeder GS, Fink GR (1980) DNA rearrangements associated with a transposable element in yeast. Cell 21:239–249
Saghai-Maroof MA, Soiman KM, Jorgenson RA, Allard RW (1984) Ribosomal DNA spacer-length polymorphisms in barley: Mendelian inheritance, chromosomal location, and population dynamics. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 81:8014–8018
Southern EM (1975) Detection of specific sequences among DNA fragments separated by electrophoresis. J Mol Biol 98:503–517
Stuber CW, Edwards MD (1986) Genotypic selection for improvement of quantitative traits using molecular marker loci. Proc 41st Ann Corn Sorg Res Conf, Chicago IL, pp 70–83
Temin HM (1987) Evolution of retroviruses and other retrotranscripts. In: Bolognesi D (ed) Human retroviruses, cancer, and AIDS. UCLA Symp Mol Cell Biol, New Ser 71:1–28. Alan R. Liss, New York
Varmus HE (1983) Retroviruses. In: Shapiro AJ (ed) Mobile genetic elements. Academic Press, New York, pp 441–503
Voytas DF, Ausubel FM (1988) A copia-like transposable element family in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature 336:242–244
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Communicated by A. R. Hallauer
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fuerstenberg, S.I., Johns, M.A. Distribution of Bs1 retrotransposons in Zea and related genera. Theoret. Appl. Genetics 80, 680–686 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00224229
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00224229