AMPLIFICATION AND LOSS OF REPEAT UNITS OF THE HUMAN MINISATELLITE MS1INTEGRATED IN CHROMOSOME-III OF A HAPLOID YEAST-STRAIN

Minisatellites comprise arrays of tandemly repeated short DNA sequence s which show extensive variation in repeat unit number. The mechanisms that underlie this length variation are not understood. In order to s tudy processes influencing length changes of minisatellites, we integr ated the human minisatellite MS1 into a haploid strain of the yeast Sa ccharomyces cerevisiae. Frequent spontaneous generation of MS1 alleles with new lengths were observed in this yeast strain. Hence it is conc luded that recombination between members of a pair of homologous chrom osomes is not a prerequisite for the generation of length changes in M S1 in yeast.