scholarly journals The cohesion protein ORD is required for homologue bias during meiotic recombination

2004 ◽  
Vol 164 (6) ◽  
pp. 819-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayley A. Webber ◽  
Louisa Howard ◽  
Sharon E. Bickel

During meiosis, sister chromatid cohesion is required for normal levels of homologous recombination, although how cohesion regulates exchange is not understood. Null mutations in orientation disruptor (ord) ablate arm and centromeric cohesion during Drosophila meiosis and severely reduce homologous crossovers in mutant oocytes. We show that ORD protein localizes along oocyte chromosomes during the stages in which recombination occurs. Although synaptonemal complex (SC) components initially associate with synapsed homologues in ord mutants, their localization is severely disrupted during pachytene progression, and normal tripartite SC is not visible by electron microscopy. In ord germaria, meiotic double strand breaks appear and disappear with frequency and timing indistinguishable from wild type. However, Ring chromosome recovery is dramatically reduced in ord oocytes compared with wild type, which is consistent with the model that defects in meiotic cohesion remove the constraints that normally limit recombination between sisters. We conclude that ORD activity suppresses sister chromatid exchange and stimulates inter-homologue crossovers, thereby promoting homologue bias during meiotic recombination in Drosophila.

PLoS Genetics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. e1009663
Author(s):  
Maria Velkova ◽  
Nicola Silva ◽  
Maria Rosaria Dello Stritto ◽  
Alexander Schleiffer ◽  
Pierre Barraud ◽  
...  

Homologous recombination is a high-fidelity repair pathway for DNA double-strand breaks employed during both mitotic and meiotic cell divisions. Such repair can lead to genetic exchange, originating from crossover (CO) generation. In mitosis, COs are suppressed to prevent sister chromatid exchange. Here, the BTR complex, consisting of the Bloom helicase (HIM-6 in worms), topoisomerase 3 (TOP-3), and the RMI1 (RMH-1 and RMH-2) and RMI2 scaffolding proteins, is essential for dismantling joint DNA molecules to form non-crossovers (NCOs) via decatenation. In contrast, in meiosis COs are essential for accurate chromosome segregation and the BTR complex plays distinct roles in CO and NCO generation at different steps in meiotic recombination. RMI2 stabilizes the RMI1 scaffolding protein, and lack of RMI2 in mitosis leads to elevated sister chromatid exchange, as observed upon RMI1 knockdown. However, much less is known about the involvement of RMI2 in meiotic recombination. So far, RMI2 homologs have been found in vertebrates and plants, but not in lower organisms such as Drosophila, yeast, or worms. We report the identification of the Caenorhabditis elegans functional homolog of RMI2, which we named RMIF-2. The protein shows a dynamic localization pattern to recombination foci during meiotic prophase I and concentration into recombination foci is mutually dependent on other BTR complex proteins. Comparative analysis of the rmif-2 and rmh-1 phenotypes revealed numerous commonalities, including in regulating CO formation and directing COs toward chromosome arms. Surprisingly, the prevalence of heterologous recombination was several fold lower in the rmif-2 mutant, suggesting that RMIF-2 may be dispensable or less strictly required for some BTR complex-mediated activities during meiosis.


2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Johnson ◽  
M. Jasin

In mammalian cells, the repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) occurs by both homologous and non-homologous mechanisms. Indirect evidence, including that from gene targeting and random integration experiments, had suggested that non-homologous mechanisms were significantly more frequent than homologous ones. However, more recent experiments indicate that homologous recombination is also a prominent DSB repair pathway. These experiments show that mammalian cells use homologous sequences located at multiple positions throughout the genome to repair a DSB. However, template preference appears to be biased, with the sister chromatid being preferred by 2–3 orders of magnitude over a homologous or heterologous chromosome. The outcome of homologous recombination in mammalian cells is predominantly gene conversion that is not associated with crossing-over. The preference for the sister chromatid and the bias against crossing-over seen in mitotic mammalian cells may have developed in order to reduce the potential for genome alterations that could occur when other homologous repair templates are utilized. In attempts to understand further the mechanism of homologous recombination, the proteins that promote this process are beginning to be identified. To date, four mammalian proteins have been demonstrated conclusively to be involved in DSB repair by homologous recombination: Rad54, XRCC2, XRCC3 and BRCAI. This paper summarizes results from a number of recent studies.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clémence Claussin ◽  
David Porubský ◽  
Diana C.J. Spierings ◽  
Nancy Halsema ◽  
Stefan Rentas ◽  
...  

SummaryHomologous recombination involving sister chromatids is the most accurate, and thus most frequently used, form of recombination-mediated DNA repair. Despite its importance, sister chromatid recombination is not easily studied because it does not result in a change in DNA sequence, making recombination between sister chromatids difficult to detect. We have previously developed a novel DNA template strand sequencing technique, called Strand-seq, that can be used to map sister chromatid exchange (SCE) events genome-wide in single cells. An increase in the rate of SCE is an indicator of elevated recombination activity and of genome instability, which is a hallmark of cancer. In this study, we have adapted Strand-seq to detect SCE in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Contrary to what is commonly thought, we find that most spontaneous SCE events are not due to the repair of DNA double-strand breaks.


1987 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 2007-2011
Author(s):  
C A Hoy ◽  
J C Fuscoe ◽  
L H Thompson

Transformation frequencies were measured in CHO mutant EM9 after transfection with intact or modified plasmid pSV2-gpt. The mutant and wild-type strain behaved similarly under all conditions except when homologous recombination was required to produce an intact plasmid. Therefore, the defect of the mutant which renders it slow in DNA strand break rejoining and high in sister chromatid exchange induction reduces its ability to recombine foreign DNA molecules.


1997 ◽  
Vol 139 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A. Bascom-Slack ◽  
Dean S. Dawson

The recognition and alignment of homologous chromosomes early in meiosis is essential for their subsequent segregation at anaphase I; however, the mechanism by which this occurs is unknown. We demonstrate here that, in the absence of the molecular motor, Kar3p, meiotic cells are blocked with prophase monopolar microtubule arrays and incomplete synaptonemal complex (SC) formation. kar3 mutants exhibit very low levels of heteroallelic recombination. kar3 mutants do produce double-strand breaks that act as initiation sites for meiotic recombination in yeast, but at levels severalfold reduced from wild-type. These data are consistent with a meiotic role for Kar3p in the events that culminate in synapsis of homologues.


1985 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. 3532-3544 ◽  
Author(s):  
J E Wagstaff ◽  
S Klapholz ◽  
C S Waddell ◽  
L Jensen ◽  
R E Esposito

We used haploid yeast cells that express both the MATa and MAT alpha mating-type alleles and contain the spo13-1 mutation to characterize meiotic recombination within single, unpaired chromosomes in Rec+ and Rec- Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In Rec+ haploids, as in diploids, intrachromosomal recombination in the ribosomal DNA was detected in 2 to 6% of meiotic divisions, and most events were unequal reciprocal sister chromatid exchange (SCE). By contrast, intrachromosomal recombination between duplicated copies of the his4 locus occurred in approximately 30% of haploid meiotic divisions, a frequency much higher than that reported in diploids; only about one-half of the events were unequal reciprocal SCE. The spo11-1 mutation, which virtually eliminates meiotic exchange between homologs in diploid meiosis, reduced the frequency of intrachromosomal recombination in both the ribosomal DNA and the his4 duplication during meiosis by 10- to greater than 50-fold. This Rec- mutation affected all forms of recombination within chromosomes: unequal reciprocal SCE, reciprocal intrachromatid exchange, and gene conversion. Intrachromosomal recombination in spo11-1 haploids was restored by transformation with a plasmid containing the wild-type SPO11 gene. Mitotic intrachromosomal recombination frequencies were unaffected by spo11-1. This is the first demonstration of a gene product required for recombination between homologs as well as recombination within chromosomes during meiosis.


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