26th Annual Student Research Conference
Composition of nuclear mitochondrial DNA insertions on the short arm of chromosome 1 in B73
Kyleen E. Elwick
Dr. Ashley N. Lough, Faculty Mentor
This study examined the composition of nuclear mitochondrial DNA insertion sites (NUMTs) on maize chromosome 1. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) identified a NUMT on chromosome 1S using the maize mitochondrial genome as a probe. We hypothesized that this NUMT is composed of many small pieces of mitochondrial DNA dispersed with other non-mitochondrial sequences. The 1S NUMT is distal to a subtelomeric repeat, which we used as a boundary. For the current maize genome assembly, we assessed the organization of mitochondrial sequences using the ZeAlign BLAST program and MaizeGDB Genome Browser. The largest contiguous mitochondrial DNA sequence was ~3.6 kb, and a total ~29 kb of the mitochondrial genome was found dispersed across ~138 kb of the nuclear genome. Predicted genes and repetitive DNA were also found in this region. Thus, the chromosome 1S NUMT is made of many small pieces of mtDNA dispersed within other nuclear sequences.
Keywords: maize, genome, chromosome, mitochondria, NUMT, FISH
Topic(s):Biology
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: 2-11
Location: GEO
Time: 3:30