Structure of the intergenic spacers in chicken ribosomal DNA.

Due to the highly organized GC-rich repeats, the structure of the chicken IGS differs from that of IGS in human, apes, Xenopus or fish rDNA. However, the chicken IGS shares some molecular organization features with that of the turtles, which are other representatives of the Sauropsida clade that includes birds and reptiles. Our current results on the structure of chicken IGS together with the previously reported ribosomal gene cluster sequence provide sufficient data to consider that the complete chicken rDNA sequence is assembled with confidence in terms of molecular DNA organization.