RESTRICTION-ENDONUCLEASE ANALYSIS OF HIGHLY REPEATED DNA-SEQUENCES SHEDS LIGHT ON GENETIC RELATEDNESS OF LOWER TAXA OF ANIMALS

Digestion of highly reiterated DNA sequences with restriction endonucl eases, P-32-endlabeling of fragments, and electrophoretic separation t hereof in nondenaturing FAG was used to study animal taxa of lower ran ks. It was demonstrated that reproducible and stable patterns of distr ibution of the digestion products obtained with each restriction endon uclease are not individual- but species-specific. Common bands in such ''taxoprints'' of related species and genera may be used to evaluate the genetic relatedness of taxa: this follows from the study of more t han 50 species from several mammalian, reptilian, piscine, and insect genera. The degree of pattern similarity was found to be directly rela ted to the evolutionary age of species determined by independent metho ds. As a rule, individuals from different populations of a species hav e identical patterns, but taxoprints of some populations at the subspe cies level may have group-specific bands. A correlation was observed b etween the degree of similarity of taxoprints and the speciation stage .