Application of an efficient strategy with a phage lambda vector for constructing a physical map of the amyloplast genome of sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus)

Amyloplasts were isolated from a heterotrophic culture cell line of a woody plant, sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), and their DNA was purified. Conventional procedures for making a physical map were not easily applicable to the amyloplast DNA, since the yield of DNA was too low and the presence of repeated sequences interfered with the analysis. Therefore, the pieces of amyloplast DNA starting with a few micrograms of DNA were cloned in the lambda Fix vector, which is a derivative of lambda EMBL vectors improved for efficient cloning and gene walking. Cloned DNA fragments were randomly picked, mapped for restriction endonuclease sites by a refined procedure, and combined by overlapping their physical maps. The DNA library was also subjected to screening by gene walking using promoters recognized by T3 and T7 RNA polymerases in the vector to fill the gaps between sequences determined by overlapping the physical maps. In this way, we constructed the entire DNA library and the complete physical map of the amyloplast DNA. The sycamore amyloplast genome was composed of 141.7-kbp nucleotides with the same gene arrangement as that of tobacco chloroplasts.