What is it about?
Meiotic recombination is the exchange of homologous chromosomes during meiosis, which can lead to new combinations of genes. This study investigates how transposable elements (TEs), prevalent selfish genetic elements, might impact recombination. We developed a cost-effective sequencing approach to identify recombination events. By applying this approach to Drosophila strains with distinct TE insertion profiles, we found that TEs reduce the occurrence of recombination in their neighboring regions. Two independent approaches further support the suppressive effect of TEs on recombination.
Featured Image
Photo by Artem Kniaz on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This study explores the cross-talk between two major drivers of genome evolution—meiotic recombination and transposable elements (TEs), selfish genetic elements that move within genomes. In many species, genomic regions with low recombination rates often contain more TEs. Previously, researchers thought this pattern existed because these regions are more permissive for TE accumulation. Here, we challenge this view by testing the converse hypothesis that TEs directly repress recombination. We developed a long-read pool-sequencing method to efficiently, accurately, and cost-effectively identify recombination events. Combining this with two other orthogonal approaches, we found that TEs suppress recombination and contribute to varying recombination landscapes between individuals. Our findings reveal that TEs can actively modify recombination, which influences genome evolution within and between species.
Perspectives
Our study presents the first direct evidence that TEs can suppress recombination locally in a model organism. Future research should focus on quantifying the significance of such an effect across diverse taxa and genomic contexts. Since recombination is a fundamental process in genetics and evolution, this discovery has broad implications, including selective breeding, conservation biology, and medical genetics.
Yuheng Huang
University of California Irvine
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Polymorphic transposable elements contribute to variation in recombination landscapes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2427312122.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
