Recombination clusters nonuniformly across mammalian genomes at discrete genomic loci referred to as recombination hotspots. Despite their ubiquitous presence, individual hotspots rapidly lose their activities, and the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms underlying such frequent hotspot turnovers (the so-called "recombination hotspot paradox") remain unresolved. Even though some sequence moti...

Although very closely related species can differ in their fine-scale patterns of recombination hotspots, variation in the average genomic recombination rate among recently diverged taxa has rarely been surveyed. We measured recombination rates in eight species that collectively represent several temporal scales of divergence within a single rodent family, Muridae. We used a cytological approach...

To elucidate the mechanism for intermolecular homologous recombination in plants we cotransformed Nicotiana tabacum cv Petit Havana SR1 protoplasts with constructs carrying different defective derivatives of the NPTII gene. The resulting kanamycin resistant clones were screened for possible recombination products by PCR, which proved to be a valuable technique for this analysis. Our results sho...

Homologous recombination (HR) is required for accurate chromosome segregation during the first meiotic division and constitutes a key repair and tolerance pathway for complex DNA damage, including DNA double-strand breaks, interstrand crosslinks, and DNA gaps. In addition, recombination and replication are inextricably linked, as recombination recovers stalled and broken replication forks, enab...