The intergenic region between the Vicia faba chloroplast tRNA(CAALeu) and tRNA(UAALeu) genes contains a partial copy of the split tRNA(UAALeu) gene.

A cluster of three tRNA genes located on fragment Bam6a from Vicia faba chloroplast DNA has been sequenced: it contains the genes for tRNA(CAALeu), tRNA(UAALeu) and tRNA(Phe). The two tRNA(Leu) genes are separated by 443 bp and are transcribed divergently from different DNA strands. The intergenic region contains a series of short repeats and a partial copy of the split tRNA(UAALeu) gene which includes 100 bp of the 5' flanking region, 35 bp of the 5'exon and the first 42 bp of the intron. It is possible that some of these duplications occurred upon the rearrangement of the two tRNA(Leu) genes in broad bean (and in pea) or upon the deletion of one copy of the inverted repeat, since in all other higher plant chloroplast genomes studied so far these two tRNA(Leu) genes are located far apart on the genome, one being in the inverted repeat region, the other one in the large single copy region. The tRNA(Phe) and tRNA(UAALeu) are encoded by the same DNA strand, and separated by 110 bp.