Studies of an 800-kilobase DNA stretch of the Drosophila X chromosome: comapping of a subclass of scaffold-attached regions with sequences able to replicate autonomously in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We have previously mapped scaffold-attached regions (SARs) on an 800-kilobase DNA walk from the Drosophila X chromosome. We have also previously shown that the strength of binding, i.e., the ability of SARs to bind to all nuclear scaffolds or only to a fraction of them varied from one SAR to another one. In the present study, 71 of the 85 subfragments that bind scaffolds and 38 fragments that do not bind scaffolds were tested for their ability to promote autonomous replicating sequence (ARS) activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Sixteen SAR-containing fragments from the chromosome walk were also examined for association to yeast nuclear scaffolds in vitro. All identified ARSs (a total of 27) were present on SAR-containing fragments, except two, which were adjacent to SARs. There is thus a correlation between ARS and SAR activities, and this correlation defines a SAR subclass. Moreover, the presence of an ARS on a DNA fragment appeared to be highly correlated with the strength of binding. The binding activity was highly conserved from Drosophila melanogaster to yeast. These data suggest that Drosophila DNA sequences responsible for binding to components of the nuclear scaffold from either D. melanogaster or yeast may be involved in the process of heterologous extrachromosomal replication in yeasts.