The nucleotide sequence of a mitochondrial replicon from maize.

The 1913-bp maize mitochondrial (mt) plasmid was isolated from a suspension culture of a Black Mexican Sweet maize strain, cloned into M13mp vectors, and sequenced by a unidirectional progressive deletion method. The 1.9-kb extrachromosomal double-stranded circular DNA plasmid was found to contain regions of sequence which in other systems are known to be part of origins of replication (ori). This plasmid could be used as a carrier for chimeric genes and a molecular probe for replication.