Abstract
Cyanidioschyzon merolae is a unicellular red alga that lives in sulphate-rich hot springs. It has 20 chromosomes which vary from 422 kbp to 1.6 Mbp in size. The entire C. merolae genome of about 16.5 Mbp was determined (Matsuzaki et al. 2004). The architecture of telomeres is related to the integrity of eukaryotic genome. To determine telomeres in C. merolae, two PCR methods were used. One is a PCR amplification using polyC-tailing by terminal transferase and anchor primers. Another one is a inverse PCR method. These results suggested that sequence of telomere repeat is 5'-AATGGGGGG-3'. Using primer including this telomere sequence and primer near the end of each chromosome, end regions of other chromosomes were amplified by PCR and cloned. Their sequences suggested that C. merolae has a few complete telomere repeats at all chromosome ends.
