Molecular genetic analysis of Drosophila rDNA arrays

Large repeated DNA arrays are a major component of the eukaryotic genome, but we know little about their internal organization. Understanding their architecture, however, is critical for describing genome structure and for inferring the mechanisms that shape it. One repeated family that is yielding a picture of how structure, function and recombination mechanisms come together is the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) of Drosophila melanogaster.