Two separate regions of the extrachromosomal ribosomal deoxyribonucleic acid of Tetrahymena thermophila enable autonomous replication of plasmids in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Plasmids containing the nontranscribed central and terminal, but not the coding, regions of the extrachromosomal ribosomal deoxyribonucleic acid (rDNA) of Tetrahymena thermophila are capable of autonomous replication in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These plasmids transform S. cerevisiae at high frequency; transformants are unstable in the absence of selection, and plasmids identical to those used for transformation were isolated from the transformed yeast cells. One plasmid contains a 1.85-kilobase Tetrahymena DNA fragment which includes the origin of bidirectional replication of the extrachromosomal rDNA. The other region of Tetrahymena rDNA allowing autonomous replication of plasmids in S. cerevisiae is a 650-base pair, adenine plus thymine-rich segment from the rDNA terminus. Neither of these Tetrahymena fragments shares obvious sequence homology with the origin of replication of the S. cerevisiae 2-microns circle plasmid or with ars1, an S. cerevisiae chromosomal replicator.