Regulation of the MLH1-MLH3 endonuclease in meiosis.

During prophase of the first meiotic division, cells deliberately break their DNA. These DNA breaks are repaired by homologous recombination, which facilitates proper chromosome segregation and enables the reciprocal exchange of DNA segments between homologous chromosomes. A pathway that depends on the MLH1-MLH3 (MutLγ) nuclease has been implicated in the biased processing of meiotic recombination intermediates into crossovers by an unknown mechanism.