Kinetoplast DNA in the insect trypanosomes Crithidia luciliae and Crithidia fasciculata: II. Sequence evolution of the minicircles

Minicircle sequence evolution has been studied by comparison of the minicircles from Crithidia fasciculata and C. luciliae (C. fasciculata, var. luciliae) by restriction enzyme analysis and hybridization experiments. In contrast to the maxicircle sequence, the minicircle sequence of these trypanosomes evolves very rapidly. No conservation of restriction fragments has been observed and cross-hybridization of minicircles, minicircle fragments, and total kDNA is relatively weak. We conclude that no fragment larger than 550 bp is perfectly conserved between all minicircles of the two trypanosomes. Alterations in the minicircle fragment patterns of our stocks of trypanosomes were even apparent in a cultivation period of 1.5 to 2 years. The alterations suggest a random drift of the sequence which supports a noncodogenic function for the minicircles. Double restriction enzyme digestion experiments show that primary fragments are homogeneous with respect to cleavage by the second enzyme. This suggests that sequence rearrangements, rather than point mutations are the basis of the minicircle sequence heterogeneity.