Mutagenesis from meiotic recombination is not a primary driver of sequence divergence between Saccharomyces species.
Local rates of recombination positively correlate with DNA sequence diversity in many species. To test whether this relationship stems from mutagenicity of meiotic recombination, studies often look for a similar association between local rates of recombination and sequence "divergence" between species. Because recombination is mutagenic in yeast, I evaluate this assay by testing whether noncoding DNA sequence divergence between Saccharomyces species is related to measures of meiotic double-strand DNA breaks or crossover rates derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Contrary to expectation, I find that sequence divergence is either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with rates of both double-strand break and crossover. Several caveats are mentioned, but these results suggest that mutagenesis from meiotic recombination is not the primary driver of sequence divergence between Saccharomyces species. This study demonstrates that the association between interspecies nucleotide divergence and local recombination rates is not always a reliable indicator of recombination's mutagenicity.
Duke Scholars
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Species Specificity
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- Saccharomyces
- Recombination, Genetic
- Mutagenesis
- Meiosis
- Evolutionary Biology
- Evolution, Molecular
- DNA, Fungal
- DNA Breaks, Double-Stranded
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Species Specificity
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- Saccharomyces
- Recombination, Genetic
- Mutagenesis
- Meiosis
- Evolutionary Biology
- Evolution, Molecular
- DNA, Fungal
- DNA Breaks, Double-Stranded