title: The genomic landscape of meiotic crossovers and gene conversions in Arabidopsis thaliana.
abstract: Knowledge of the exact distribution of meiotic crossovers (COs) and gene conversions (GCs) is essential for understanding many aspects of population genetics and evolution, from haplotype structure and long-distance genetic linkage to the generation of new allelic variants of genes. To this end, we resequenced the four products of 13 meiotic tetrads along with 10 doubled haploids derived from Arabidopsis thaliana hybrids. GC detection through short reads has previously been confounded by genomic rearrangements. Rigid filtering for misaligned reads allowed GC identification at high accuracy and revealed an ∼80-kb transposition, which undergoes copy-number changes mediated by meiotic recombination. Non-crossover associated GCs were extremely rare most likely due to their short average length of ∼25-50 bp, which is significantly shorter than the length of CO-associated GCs. Overall, recombination preferentially targeted non-methylated nucleosome-free regions at gene promoters, which showed significant enrichment of two sequence motifs. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01426.001.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wijnker
authors.forename: Geo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Velikkakam James
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: Jonas R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Klasen
authors.forename: Vimal
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rawat
authors.forename: Beth A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Rowan
authors.forename: Daniël F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.forename: C Bastiaan
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: de Snoo
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zapata
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Huettel
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ossowski
authors.forename: Detlef
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weigel
authors.forename: Maarten
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Koornneef
authors.forename: Joost Jb
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Keurentjes
authors.forename: Korbinian
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schneeberger
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D003434:Crossing Over, Genetic; D005785:Gene Conversion; D018745:Genome, Plant; D006238:Haploidy; D008540:Meiosis / Q000235:genetics*
keywords: double strand break repair; gene conversion; meiotic recombination; meiotic tetrads; next generation sequencing