Uniparental inheritance of chloroplast DNA sequences in interspecific hybrids of Chlamydomonas

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Abstract
The meiotic transmission of chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) was studied in crosses between two species of Chlamydomonas (C. moewusii and C. eugametos) which have substantial differences in cpDNA restriction patterns. The results provide a direct demonstration that cpDNA can be inherited in a uniparental pattern, paralleling the transmission of a uniparentally inherited antibiotic resistance marker. Thus, cpDNA could carry the uniparental genes of these species, but other extrachromosomal DNAs are not excluded as possible carriers. For example, C. moewusii was found to contain a set of low molecular weight (LMW) DNA species which cannot be detected in C. eugametos. These LMW DNA species are also transmitted uniparentally in the tetrads studied. Uniparentai transmission may not be an exclusive property of cpDNA in Chlamydomonas species.