Searching for agrobacterial T-DNA fragments in plant genomes

Motivation: The aim of this work was to search for the nucleotide sequences in plant genome data banks similar to agrobacterial T-DNA fragments, in order to evaluate the role of naturally associated soilborne agrobacteria in plant evolution. Results: Depending on the variant and length of the T-DNA right-border fragment, we found from 2 to 115 nucleotide sequences within different plant genomes. Most of them were found in the corn genome. The length of T-DNA right border-like sequences varied from 10 to 17 bp, depending on the plant genome. We hypothesize that the full-length agrobacterial T-DNA insertion into the plant genome possible involved in plant evolution but was eliminated during plant evolution, since T-DNA fragments are presented as 40-60 % of full-length TRBLF. All fragments similar with nptII and rolC genes found in plant genomes were very short (10-21 nucleotides) and possibly were not represented as full-length transfer sequences.