title: Nonparadoxical evolutionary stability of the recombination initiation landscape in yeast.
abstract: The nonrandom distribution of meiotic recombination shapes heredity and genetic diversification. Theoretically, hotspots--favored sites of recombination initiation--either evolve rapidly toward extinction or are conserved, especially if they are chromosomal features under selective constraint, such as promoters. We tested these theories by comparing genome-wide recombination initiation maps from widely divergent Saccharomyces species. We find that hotspots frequently overlap with promoters in the species tested, and consequently, hotspot positions are well conserved. Remarkably, the relative strength of individual hotspots is also highly conserved, as are larger-scale features of the distribution of recombination initiation. This stability, not predicted by prior models, suggests that the particular shape of the yeast recombination landscape is adaptive and helps in understanding evolutionary dynamics of recombination in other species.
authors.affiliation: Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. Molecular Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.affiliation: Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. Molecular Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. s-keeney@ski.mskcc.org.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Keeney
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D015825:Chromosomes, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D053903:DNA Breaks, Double-Stranded; D016681:Genome, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D059765:Homologous Recombination; D008540:Meiosis / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*