title: The effect of sequence divergence on recombination between direct repeats in Arabidopsis.
abstract: It is well established that sequence divergence has an inhibitory effect on homologous recombination. However, a detailed analysis of this relationship is missing for most higher eukaryotes. We have measured the rate of somatic recombination between direct repeats as a function of the number, type, and position of divergent nucleotides in Arabidopsis. We show that a minor divergence level of 0.16% (one mutation in otherwise identical 618 bp) has a profound effect, decreasing the recombination rate approximately threefold. A further increase in the divergence level affects the recombination rate to a smaller extent until a "divergence saturation" effect is reached at relatively low levels of divergence ( approximately 0.5%). The type of mismatched nucleotide does not affect recombination rates. The decrease in the rate of recombination caused by a single mismatch was not affected by the position of the mismatch along the repeat. This suggests that most recombination intermediate tracts contain a mismatch and thus are as long as the full length of the 618-bp repeats. Finally, we could deduce an antirecombination efficiency of approximately 66% for the first mismatch in the repeat. Altogether, this work shows some degree of conservation across kingdoms when compared to previous reports in yeast; it also provides new insight into the effect of sequence divergence on homologous recombination.
authors.affiliation: Plant Sciences Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100 Israel.
authors.forename: Roy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Opperman
authors.forename: Eyal
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Emmanuel
authors.forename: Avraham A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Levy
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D001681:Biological Assay; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid