Mutagenesis from meiotic recombination is not a primary driver of sequence divergence between Saccharomyces species.

ABSTRACT: Local rates of recombination positively correlate with DNA sequence diversity in many species. To test whether this relationship stems from mutagenicity of meiotic recombination, studies often look for a similar association between local rates of recombination and sequence "divergence" between species. Because recombination is mutagenic in yeast, I evaluate this assay by testing whether noncoding DNA sequence divergence between Saccharomyces species is related to measures of meiotic double-strand DNA breaks or crossover rates derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Contrary to expectation, I find that sequence divergence is either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with rates of both double-strand break and crossover. Several caveats are mentioned, but these results suggest that mutagene

SUBMITTER: Noor MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2727390 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature