Vilya, a component of the recombination nodule, is required for meiotic double-strand break formation in Drosophila

  1. Cathleen M Lake
  2. Rachel J Nielsen
  3. Fengli Guo
  4. Jay R Unruh
  5. Brian D Slaughter
  6. R Scott Hawley  Is a corresponding author
  1. Stowers Institute for Medical Research, United States

Abstract

Meiotic recombination begins with the induction of programmed double-strand breaks (DSBs). In most organisms only a fraction of DSBs become crossovers. Here we report a novel meiotic gene, vilya, which encodes a protein with homology to Zip3-like proteins shown to determine DSB fate in other organisms. Vilya is required for meiotic DSB formation, perhaps as a consequence of its interaction with the DSB accessory protein Mei-P22, and localizes to those DSB sites that will mature into crossovers. In early pachytene Vilya localizes along the central region of the synaptonemal complex and to discrete foci. The accumulation of Vilya at foci is dependent on DSB formation. Immuno-electron microscopy demonstrates that Vilya is a component of recombination nodules, which mark the sites of crossover formation. Thus Vilya links the mechanism of DSB formation to either the selection of those DSBs that will become crossovers or to the actual process of crossing over.

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Author details

  1. Cathleen M Lake

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Rachel J Nielsen

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Fengli Guo

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Jay R Unruh

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Brian D Slaughter

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. R Scott Hawley

    Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
    For correspondence
    rsh@stowers.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Copyright

© 2015, Lake et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Cathleen M Lake
  2. Rachel J Nielsen
  3. Fengli Guo
  4. Jay R Unruh
  5. Brian D Slaughter
  6. R Scott Hawley
(2015)
Vilya, a component of the recombination nodule, is required for meiotic double-strand break formation in Drosophila
eLife 4:e08287.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.08287

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.08287