A natural meiotic DNA break site in Schizosaccharomyces pombe is a hotspot of gene conversion, highly associated with crossing over.

ABSTRACT: In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, meiosis-specific DNA breaks that initiate recombination are observed at prominent but widely separated sites. We investigated the relationship between breakage and recombination at one of these sites, the mbs1 locus on chromosome I. Breaks corresponding to 10% of chromatids were mapped to four clusters spread over a 2.1-kb region. Gene conversion of markers within the clusters occurred in 11% of tetrads (3% of meiotic chromatids), making mbs1 a conversion hotspot when compared to other fission yeast markers. Approximately 80% of these conversions were associated with crossing over of flanking markers, suggesting a strong bias in meiotic break repair toward the generation of crossovers. This bias was observed in conversion events at three other loci, ade6, ade7

SUBMITTER: Cromie GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1449127 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature