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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1987 Jan;84(2):565–569. doi: 10.1073/pnas.84.2.565

Kinetoplast DNA minicircles: regions of extensive sequence divergence.

W O Rogers, D F Wirth
PMCID: PMC304251  PMID: 3025880

Abstract

Previous work has shown that the kinetoplast minicircle DNA of Leishmania species exhibits species-specific sequence divergence and this observation has led to the development of a DNA probe-based diagnostic test for leishmaniasis. In the work reported here, we demonstrate that the minicircle is composed of three types of DNA sequences with differing specificities reflecting different rates of DNA sequence change. A library of cloned fragments of kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) from Leishmania mexicana amazonensis was prepared and the cloned subfragments were found to contain DNA sequences with different taxonomic specificities based on hybridization analysis with various species of Leishmania. Four groups of subfragments were found, those that hybridized with a large number of Leishmania sp. as well as sequences unique to the species, subspecies, or isolate. Analysis of nested deletions of a single, full-length minicircle demonstrates that these different taxonomic specificities are contained within a single minicircle. This implies that different regions of a single minicircle have DNA sequences that diverge at different rates. These sequences represent potentially valuable tools in diagnostic, epidemiologic, and ecological studies of leishmaniasis and provide the basis for a model of kDNA sequence evolution.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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