THE COMPOSITIONAL COMPARTMENTS OF THE NUCLEAR GENOMES OF TRYPANOSOMA-BRUCEI AND TRYPANOSOMA-CRUZI

Fractionation of DNA from Trypanosoma brucei and T. equiperdum by cent rifugation in a Cs2SO4/BAMD density gradient indicated that these geno mes are compositionally compartmentalized, a conclusion confirmed by t he analysis of the compositional distribution of third codon positions from T. brucei and T. cruzi. In order to investigate whether this com partmentalization is accompanied by the often different properties of coding sequences, we have analyzed and compared the compositional comp artments with respect to dinucleotide frequency and amino-acid usage o f the encoded proteins of all gene sequences available in the GenBank database from T. brucei and T. cruzi. In all cases, the compartments d isplayed remarkable differences. These results are similar to findings obtained in highly compartmentalized genomes, like those of warm-bloo ded vertebrates.