Local chromosome context is a major determinant of crossover pathway biochemistry during budding yeast meiosis

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Abstract

The budding yeast genome contains regions where meiotic recombination initiates more frequently than in others. This pattern parallels enrichment for the meiotic chromosome axis proteins Hop1 and Red1. These proteins are important for Spo11-catalyzed double strand break formation; their contribution to crossover recombination remains undefined. Using the sequence-specific VMA1-derived endonuclease (VDE) to initiate recombination in meiosis, we show that chromosome structure influences the choice of proteins that resolve recombination intermediates to form crossovers. At a Hop1-enriched locus, most VDE-initiated crossovers, like most Spo11-initiated crossovers, required the meiosis-specific MutLγ resolvase. In contrast, at a locus with lower Hop1 occupancy, most VDE-initiated crossovers were MutLγ-independent. In pch2 mutants, the two loci displayed similar Hop1 occupancy levels, and VDE-induced crossovers were similarly MutLγ-dependent. We suggest that meiotic and mitotic recombination pathways coexist within meiotic cells, and that features of meiotic chromosome structure determine whether one or the other predominates in different regions.

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Darpan Medhi

Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Alastair SH Goldman

Sheffield Institute for Nucleic Acids, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Michael Lichten

Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, United States

For correspondence
mlichten@helix.nih.gov

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9707-2956

Funding

Intramural Research Program of the NIH through the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute (Intramural research award)

Michael Lichten

University of Sheffield (Graduate tuition grant)

Darpan Medhi

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.