Molecular cytogenetic analysis of Podocarpus and comparison with other gymnosperm species

DNA sequences have been mapped to the chromosomes of Podocarpus species from New Zealand and Australia by fluorescent in situ hybridization. Unlike other conifers, these species show only one pair of major sites of 45S rDNA genes, and two additional minor sites were seen in the Australian P. lawrencei. Unusually, 45S sequences collocalize to the same chromosomal region as the 5S rDNA. The telomere probe (TTTAGGG)n hybridizes to the ends of all chromosomes as well as to a large number of small sites distributed along the length of all chromosomes. Two other simple sequence repeats, (AAC)5 and (GATA)4, show a diffuse pattern of hybridization sites distributed along chromosomes. Southern blots using a variety of probes obtained from the reverse transcriptase of retroelements (gypsy, copia and LINE) from P. totara, P. nivalis and Dacrycarpus dacrydioides show that these retroelements are abundant and widespread in Podocarpaceae and also in others conifers. Some retroelements such as copia pPonty3 and gypsy pPot1li are more abundant in the genome of Picea abies and Ginkgo biloba than in the species from which they were amplified.