Abstract
A purified chloroplast fraction was prepared from caps of the giant unicellular green alga Acetabularia mediterranea (strain 17). High molecular weight DNA obtained from these chloroplasts contains at least five copies of a 10-kilobase-pair (kbp) sequence tandemly arranged. This unique sequence is present in DNA from chloroplasts of all stages of the life cycle examined. A chloroplast rDNA clone from mustard hybridized with some restriction fragments from Acetabularia chloroplast DNA but not with the repeated sequence. An 8-kbp EcoRI-Pst I fragment of the repeated sequence was cloned into pBR322 and used as a hybridization probe. No homology was found between the cloned 8-kbp sequence and chloroplast DNA from related species Acetabularia crenulata or chloroplast DNA from spinach.