HOMOLOGY BETWEEN MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA OF AGARICUS-BISPORUS AND AN INTERNAL PORTION OF A LINEAR MITOCHONDRIAL PLASMID OF AGARICUS-BITORQUIS

Agaricus bisporus, the cultivated mushroom, contains a mitochondrial fragment (50H) which was previously demonstrated by Southern hybridization to have sequence similarity to an internal region of pEM, a linear mitochondrial plasmid of Agaricus bitorquis. The nucleotide sequence of 50H was determined and compared to the sequence of the corresponding pEM fragment. The region of sequence homology on pEM is contained within an open reading frame (ORF) that may encode an RNA polymerase, but 50H is neither an intact nor a complete copy of the ORF. pEM also contains an ORF with characteristics of genes for virus-encoded DNA polymerases. pEM appears to be very similar to other linear mitochondrial plasmids (in fungi and higher plants) reported to contain ORFs that may encode the same types of polymerases. The potential functionality of the pEM sequence suggests that it has diverged less than the mitochondrial fragment from a common ancestor.