Essential role of duplications of short motif sequences in the genomic evolution of Bombyx mori

Summary The Bombyx fibroin gene has a discrete mosaic structure of various repetitive sequences, which may have evolved through various repeating arrangements. Detailed sequence analysis of the fibroin gene containing coding and noncoding regions revealed that the whole sequence could be arranged as an array of short repetitive sequences. A portion of the intron of the fibroin gene is one of interspersed repetitive elements. We cloned a 1.5-kb DNA fragment of the Bombyx genome that contains interspersed elements homologous to the intron sequence. Sequence comparison between the intron and the 1.5-kb fragment shows that partial duplication has frequently occurred in evolutionary progress, and the resultant repetitive blocks of short motif sequences are abundant in the genome. These facts suggest that tandem duplication of the short motif sequence is an important rearrangement in genomic evolution of the fibroin gene. Offprint requests to: S. Ichimura