Molecular and Cytological Analyses of Large Tracks of Centromeric DNA Reveal the Structure and Evolutionary Dynamics of Maize Centromeres

We sequenced two maize bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones anchored by the centromere-specific satellite repeat CentC. The two BACs, consisting of ∼200 kb of cytologically defined centromeric DNA, are composed exclusively of satellite sequences and retrotransposons that can be classified as centromere specific or noncentromere specific on the basis of their distribution in the maize genome. Sequence analysis suggests that the original...