Comparison of maxicircle DNAs of Leishmania tarentolae and Trypanosoma brucei.

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Abstract
The conserved portions of the maxicircle DNA of L. tarentolae and T. brucei are organized in a basically colinear manner over a 15- to 17-kilobase region that is interrupted by 2 small less-homologous sequences. The most highly conserved regions are those encoding the 9S and 12S genes. An approximately 12-kilobase region directly upstream of the 12S gene in the L. tarentolae maxicircle showed no sequence homology with the T. brucei maxicircle and also was not transcribed. An approximately 6-kilobase region in the T. brucei maxicircle in the same relative location also showed no sequence homology with the L. tarentolae maxicircle. Evolution of maxicircle DNA is proposed to occur mainly within this divergent region.