TY - JOUR TI - A conserved filamentous assembly underlies the structure of the meiotic chromosome axis AU - West, Alan MV AU - Rosenberg, Scott C AU - Ur, Sarah N AU - Lehmer, Madison K AU - Ye, Qiaozhen AU - Hagemann, Götz AU - Caballero, Iracema AU - Usón, Isabel AU - MacQueen, Amy J AU - Herzog, Franz AU - Corbett, Kevin D A2 - Tyler, Jessica K A2 - de Massy, Bernard VL - 8 PY - 2019 DA - 2019/01/18 SP - e40372 C1 - eLife 2019;8:e40372 DO - 10.7554/eLife.40372 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40372 AB - The meiotic chromosome axis plays key roles in meiotic chromosome organization and recombination, yet the underlying protein components of this structure are highly diverged. Here, we show that ‘axis core proteins’ from budding yeast (Red1), mammals (SYCP2/SYCP3), and plants (ASY3/ASY4) are evolutionarily related and play equivalent roles in chromosome axis assembly. We first identify ‘closure motifs’ in each complex that recruit meiotic HORMADs, the master regulators of meiotic recombination. We next find that axis core proteins form homotetrameric (Red1) or heterotetrameric (SYCP2:SYCP3 and ASY3:ASY4) coiled-coil assemblies that further oligomerize into micron-length filaments. Thus, the meiotic chromosome axis core in fungi, mammals, and plants shares a common molecular architecture, and likely also plays conserved roles in meiotic chromosome axis assembly and recombination control. KW - Zygosaccharomyces rouxii KW - meiotic chromosome axis KW - HORMAD protein KW - meiotic recombination KW - coiled-coil JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -