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In the human genome, extensive cytogenetic and sequence analyses have revealed that subtelomeres are hot spots of interchromosomal recombination and segmental duplications (Linardopoulou et al., 2005). This peculiar dynamic activity of subtelomeres has been reported in such diverse organisms as yeast and the malaria parasite Plasmodium (Louis, 1995; Freitas- Junior et al., 2000, 2005). As expected for a plastic region of the genome subject to reshuffling through recombination events, subtelomeres exhibit unusually high levels of within-species structural and nucleotide polymorphism (Mefford and Trask, 2002). In plants, this plasticity of subtelomeres has not been identified in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana; Heacock et al., 2004; Kuo et al., 2006) and, to our knowledge, has not yet been investigated at a large scale for other plant species with full genome sequences available. Regarding Arabidopsis, the apparent lack of high subtelomeric recombination may reflect its small and simple subtelomeres, mirroring its small genome size and relative paucity of repetitive sequences (Heacock et al., 2004; Kuo et al., 2006).
Repetitive sequences, such as satellite DNA and retroelements, constitute an important fraction of every eukaryotic genome and therefore constitute the environment in which genes are expressed. Satellite DNA can be defined as highly reiterated noncoding DNA sequences, organized as long arrays of head-totail linked repeats of 150- to 180-bp or 300- to 360-bp monomers located in the constitutive heterochromatin (Plohl et al., 2008). Despite their ubiquity in eukaryotic genomes, little is known about the mechanisms that allow these elements to accumulate. Early hypotheses considered them to be nonfunctional "selfish" or "junk" DNA segments that increase or decrease their frequency without any advantage or disadvantage for an organism (Ohno, 1972; Orgel and Crick, 1980). However, identification of satellite DNA at structurally important parts of chromosomes, such as centromeres, has suggested functional roles of satellite DNA (Ma and Jackson, 2006; Kawabe and Charlesworth, 2007). Satellite DNA can also be localized in knobs, which are cytologically visible regions of highly condensed chromatin (heterochromatin) that are distinct from pericentromeric regions in pachytene chromosomes (Fransz et al., 2000; Gaut et al., 2007; Lamb et al., 2007).
The survival of most organisms depends on the presence of specific genetic systems that maintain diversity in order to respond to changing environments. Plants, like animals, are continually challenged by...