Czech J. Genet. Plant Breed., 2005, 41(1):17-22 | DOI: 10.17221/3677-CJGPB

Structural Variability of Subtelomeres Applied for Genotyping of Selected Potato Varieties

K Neplechová¹, E Sýkorová^1,2, M Novotná^1,2, J Ptáček³, J Fajkus^1,2

¹ Laboratory of Functional Genomics and Proteomics, Masaryk University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

² Institute of Biophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

³ Potato Research Institute, Havlíčkův Brod, Czech Republic

Subtelomeric regions reveal a relatively high degree of polymorphism due to the increased frequency of recombination events in these chromosome loci. In a search for molecular markers applicable to genotyping of potato varieties, we focused on two possible sources of polymorphism occurring in this region: (i) arrangement of blocks of subtelomeric chromatin; (ii) structure of telomere-subtelomere boundary. Analysis of the internal arrangement of subtelomeric sequences showed several types of cultivar-specific spectra of PCR products arising from the variant orientation of sequence units of the ST3-subtelomeric sequence, or from different lengths of regions linking the individual sequence units. Further, the telomere-subtelomere boundary sequences were amplified using telomeric and ST3-specific primers and the obtained products were cloned. Sequence analysis of the clones resulted in characterisation of a novel telomere-associated sequence (FIN2). Primers derived from this sequence were then used alone or in combination with telomeric or ST3-specific primers to generate cultivar-specific spectra of PCR products. The described combinations of sequence-specific primers may be used for the fast, cheap and reproducible PCR-genotyping of selected potato varieties.

Keywords: genotyping; potato; PCR; subtelomere; telomere-associated DNA sequences

Published: March 31, 2005  Show citation