TY - JOUR TI - Repeated losses of PRDM9-directed recombination despite the conservation of PRDM9 across vertebrates AU - Baker, Zachary AU - Schumer, Molly AU - Haba, Yuki AU - Bashkirova, Lisa AU - Holland, Chris AU - Rosenthal, Gil G AU - Przeworski, Molly A2 - de Massy, Bernard VL - 6 PY - 2017 DA - 2017/06/06 SP - e24133 C1 - eLife 2017;6:e24133 DO - 10.7554/eLife.24133 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24133 AB - Studies of highly diverged species have revealed two mechanisms by which meiotic recombination is directed to the genome—through PRDM9 binding or by targeting promoter-like features—that lead to dramatically different evolutionary dynamics of hotspots. Here, we identify PRDM9 orthologs from genome and transcriptome data in 225 species. We find the complete PRDM9 ortholog across distantly related vertebrates but, despite this broad conservation, infer a minimum of six partial and three complete losses. Strikingly, taxa carrying the complete ortholog of PRDM9 are precisely those with rapid evolution of its predicted binding affinity, suggesting that all domains are necessary for directing recombination. Indeed, as we show, swordtail fish carrying only a partial but conserved ortholog share recombination properties with PRDM9 knock-outs. KW - Vertebrates KW - PRDM9 KW - Recombination KW - Hotspot KW - Meiosis KW - Xiphophorus JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -