Meiotic recombination is a major driver of genome evolution by creating new genetic combinations. To probe the factors driving variability of meiotic recombination, we used a high-throughput method to measure recombination rates in hybrids between SK1 and a total of 26 strains from different geographic origins and habitats. Fourteen intervals were monitored for each strain, covering chromosomes VI and XI entirely, and part of chromosome I. We found an average number of crossovers per chromosome ranging between 1.0 and 9.5 across strains ("domesticated" or not), which is higher than the average between 0.5 and 1.5 found in most organisms. In the different intervals analyzed, recombination showed up to ninefold variation across strains but global recombination landscapes along chromosomes varied less. We also built an incomplete diallel experiment to measure recombination rates in one region of chromosome XI in 10 different crosses involving five parental strains. Our overall results indicate that recombination rate is increasingly positively correlated with sequence similarity between homologs (i) in DNA double-strand-break-rich regions within intervals, (ii) in entire intervals, and (iii) at the whole genome scale. Therefore, these correlations cannot be explained by effects only. We also estimated that and effects explained 38 and 17%, respectively, of the variance of recombination rate. In addition, by using a quantitative genetics analysis, we identified an inbreeding effect that reduces recombination rate in homozygous genotypes, while other interaction effects (specific combining ability) or additive effects (general combining ability) are found to be weak. Finally, we measured significant crossover interference in some strains, and interference intensity was positively correlated with crossover number.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1534/genetics.118.301644 | DOI Listing |
PLoS Genet
January 2025
Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The synaptonemal complex (SC) is a protein-rich structure essential for meiotic recombination and faithful chromosome segregation. Acting like a zipper to paired homologous chromosomes during early prophase I, the complex is a symmetrical structure where central elements are connected on two sides by the transverse filaments to the chromatin-anchoring lateral elements. Despite being found in most major eukaryotic taxa implying a deeply conserved evolutionary origin, several components of the complex exhibit unusually high rates of sequence turnover.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNucleic Acids Res
January 2025
MOE Key Laboratory of Biosystems Homeostasis and Protection, College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, No.866 Yuhangtang Road, 310058, Hangzhou, China.
Meiosis in mammalian oocytes is interrupted by a prolonged arrest at the germinal vesicle stage, during which oocytes have to repair DNA lesions to ensure genome integrity or otherwise undergo apoptosis. The FIRRM/FLIP-FIGNL1 complex dissociates RAD51 from the joint DNA molecules in both homologous recombination (HR) and DNA replication. However, as a type of non-meiotic, non-replicative cells, whether this RAD51-dismantling mechanism regulates genome integrity in oocytes remains elusive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetics
January 2025
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
Bloom Syndrome helicase (Blm) is a RecQ family helicase involved in DNA repair, cell-cycle progression, and development. Pathogenic variants in human BLM cause the autosomal recessive disorder Bloom Syndrome, characterized by predisposition to numerous types of cancer. Prior studies of Drosophila Blm mutants lacking helicase activity or protein have shown sensitivity to DNA damaging agents, defects in repairing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), female sterility, and improper segregation of chromosomes in meiosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Biol Evol
January 2025
Institut de Biologie, École Normale Supérieure, CNRS UMR 8197, Inserm U1024, PSL Research University, Paris, F-75005, France.
Modifiers of recombination rates have been described but the selective pressures acting on them and their effect on adaptation to novel environments remain unclear. We performed experimental evolution in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans using alternative rec-1 alleles modifying the position of meiotic crossovers along chromosomes without detectable direct fitness effects. We show that adaptation to a novel environment is impaired by the allele that decreases recombination rates in the genomic regions containing fitness variation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS Biol
January 2025
Research Group Meiotic Recombination and Genome Instability, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany.
A recent study in PLOS Biology on the epigenetic recombination regulator PRDM9 in salmonid fish reveals that its function has been preserved across vertebrates for hundreds of millions of years, with rapidly evolving DNA-binding domains being a defining attribute.
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