Nucleic Acids Research, 1980, Vol. 8, No. 16 3623-3638
© 1980
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY |
Fine structure of ribosomal RNA. IV. Extraordinary evolutionary conservation in sequences that flank introns in rDNA*
Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University Providence, RI 02912, USA
Received May 15, 1980.
By hybridization and DNA sequencing, we have defined a specific region in Xenopus rDNA that is extremely conserved between Tetrshymena, a protozoan, and Xenopus, a vertebrate. This highly conserved region is found at the site where an intron has been shown to interrupt Tetrahymena rDNA [1,2] although we have not detected introns in genomic or cloned Xenopus rDNA. We have noted that the sequences corresponding to nuclear rDNA intron-flanking regions show an intriguing complementarity to
This suggests possible models for tRNA-rRNA interactions in protein synthesis and/or rRNA splicing.
*Paper III in this series is reference 29.