Proteins of the RecA family carry out the central reaction in homologous recombination by forming stretches of hybrid DNA that connect two identical or closely related DNA duplexes. During the mitotic cell cycle, formation of hybrid DNA can serve to align sequences for accurate repair of DNA double-strand breaks or damaged replication forks. During meiosis, recombination serves to create new co...

The ploidy of eukaryote gametes must be halved to avoid doubling of numbers of chromosomes with each generation and this is carried out by meiosis, a specialized cell division in which a single chromosomal replication phase is followed by two successive nuclear divisions. With some exceptions, programmed recombination ensures the proper pairing and distribution of homologous pairs of chromosome...

Estrogen exposure during early-life stages has been found to delay ovarian development in female fish, even after a long-term depuration period. However, the mechanisms underlying disordered remain unclear. In this study, larvae of tiger puffer Takifugu rubripes were exposed 0 (control) and 10 μg/L 17β-estradiol (E2) from 20 90 days post-hatch (dph) maintained clear seawater until 180 dph. Gene...

The basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus has many advantages as a model organism for studying sexual development and meiosis, but it has been difficult to investigate using reverse-genetics methods, such as gene disruption by homologous recombination. Here, gene repression by dsRNA-mediated gene silencing was tried as an alternative method for reverse-genetics studies. It was shown that transformati...

In meiotic DNA recombination, the Hop2-Mnd1 complex promotes Dmc1-mediated single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) invasion into homologous chromosomes to form a synaptic complex by a yet-unclear mechanism. Here, the crystal structure of Hop2-Mnd1 reveals that it forms a curved rod-like structure consisting of three leucine zippers and two kinked junctions. One end of the rod is linked to two juxtaposed wi...

During mouse meiosis, the early prophase RAD51/DMC1 recombination protein sites, which are associated with the chromosome cores and which serve as markers for ongoing DNA-DNA interactions, are in ten-fold excess of the eventual reciprocal recombinant events. Most, if not all, of these early interactions are eliminated as prophase progresses. The manner in which these sites are eliminated is the...

The eukaryotic RecA homologue Rad51 is a key factor in homologous recombination and recombinational repair. Rad51-like proteins have been identified in yeast (Rad55, Rad57 and Dmc1), plants and vertebrates (RAD51B, RAD51C, RAD51D, XRCC2, XRCC3 and DMC1). RAD51 and DMC1 are the strand-exchange proteins forming a nucleofilament for strand invasion, however, the function of the paralogues in the p...

The evolutionarily conserved Hop2-Mnd1 complex is a key cofactor for the meiosis-specific recombinase Dmc1. However, emerging evidence has revealed that Hop2-Mnd1 is expressed in somatic tissues, primary human fibroblasts and cell lines, and that it functions in conjunction with the Rad51 recombinase to repair damaged telomeres via the alternate lengthening of telomeres mechanism. Here, we reve...

The genome of Schizosaccharomyces pombe contains five genes that code for proteins with sequence similarity to the Escherichia coli recombination protein RecA: rad51+, rhp55+, rhp57+, rlp1+, and dmc1+. We analyzed the effect of deletion of each of these genes on meiotic recombination and viability of spores. Meiotic recombination levels were different from wild type in all recA-related mutants ...