Definition of a second dimeric subfamily of human alpha satellite DNA

We describe a new human subfamily of alpha satellite DNA. The restriction endonuclease XbaI cleaves this subfamily into a collection of fragments which are heterogeneous with respect to size. We compared the sequences of 6 clones from four different XbaI size classes. Clones from a single size class were not necessarily more related than clones from different classes. Clones from different size classes were found to produce almost identical hybridization patterns with XbaI-digested human genomic DNA. All clones were found to share a common dimeric repeat organization, with dimers exhibiting about 84% sequence identities, indicating that the clones evolved from a common progenitor alphoid dimer. We show that this subfamily, and the EcoRI dimer subfamily originally described by Wu and Manuelidis, evolved from different progenitor alphoid dimers, and therefore represent distinct human alphoid subfamilies.