First published online March 2, 2007; 10.1105/tpc.106.049106
The Plant Cell 19:862-876 (2007)
© 2007 American Society of Plant Biologists
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE
The Mismatch Repair Protein MLH1 Marks a Subset of Strongly Interfering Crossovers in Tomato[W],[OA]
Franck G.P. Lhuissiera,b,1,
Hildo H. Offenberga,1,
Peter E. Wittichb,2,
Norbert O.E. Vischerc and
Christa Heytinga,3
a Wageningen University and Research Centre, Molecular Genetics Group, NL-6703BD Wageningen, The Netherlands
b Keygene, NL-6700AE Wageningen, The Netherlands
c Department of Molecular Cell Biology, University of Amsterdam, NL-1098SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail christa.heyting{at}wur.nl; fax 31-317-483146.
In most eukaryotes, the prospective chromosomal positions of meiotic crossovers are marked during meiotic prophase by protein complexes called late recombination nodules (LNs). In tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), a cytological recombination map has been constructed based on LN positions. We demonstrate that the mismatch repair protein MLH1 occurs in LNs. We determined the positions of MLH1 foci along the 12 tomato chromosome pairs (bivalents) during meiotic prophase and compared the map of MLH1 focus positions with that of LN positions. On all 12 bivalents, the number of MLH1 foci was 70% of the number of LNs. Bivalents with zero MLH1 foci were rare, which argues against random failure of detecting MLH1 in the LNs. We inferred that there are two types of LNs, MLH1-positive and MLH1-negative LNs, and that each bivalent gets an obligate MLH1-positive LN. The two LN types are differently distributed along the bivalents. Furthermore, cytological interference among MLH1 foci was much stronger than interference among LNs, implying that MLH1 marks the positions of a subset of strongly interfering crossovers. Based on the distances between MLH1 foci or LNs, we propose that MLH1-positive and MLH1-negative LNs stem from the same population of weakly interfering precursors.
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