Genetic mapping of tandemly repeated telomeric DNA sequences in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)

A telomere-associated tandemly repeated DNA sequence of tomato, TGR I, has been used to map telomeres on the tomato RFLP linkage map. Mapping was performed by monitoring the segregation of entire arrays of TGR I from a segregating F2 population using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). With this strategy, four telomeres have been mapped to the ends of the short arm of chromosomes 9 and 12 and the long arms of chromosomes 5 and 11, using a saturated RFLP map of tomato containing approximately 1000 RFLP markers. In all four cases, the TGR I locus maps to the end of the chromosome, and the distance between the most distal single-copy RFLP marker and the telomeric TGR I locus was between 1.6 and 9.6 cM. This indicates that the region close to the telomeres does not show an excessive rate of recombination compared to other regions of the genome and that the RFLP map of tomato is essentially complete and covers the entire genome for all practical purposes. Additionally, the mapping technique presented here should be generally applicable to the mapping of other tandemly repeated DNA sequences.