Abstract
Meiosis is unusual among cell divisions in shuffling genetic material by crossovers among homologous chromosomes and partitioning the genome into haploid gametes. Crossovers are critical for chromosome segregation in most eukaryotes, but are also an important factor in evolution, as they generate novel genetic combinations. The molecular mechanisms that underpin meiotic recombination and chromosome segregation are well conserved across kingdoms, but are also sensitive to perturbation by environment, especially temperature. Even subtle shifts in temperature can alter the number and placement of crossovers, while at greater extremes, structural failures can occur in the linear axis and synaptonemal complex structures which are essential for recombination and chromosome segregation. Understanding the effects of temperature on these processes is important for its implications in evolution and breeding, especially in the context of global warming. In this review, we first summarize the process of meiotic recombination and its reliance on axis and synaptonemal complex structures, and then discuss effects of temperature on these processes and structures. We hypothesize that some consistent effects of temperature on recombination and meiotic thermotolerance may commonly be two sides of the same coin, driven by effects of temperature on the folding or interaction of key meiotic proteins.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Evolutionary causes and consequences of recombination rate variation in sexual organisms’.
Highlights
Meiosis is a special division during which a cell undergoes two sequential rounds of chromosome segregation with no intervening DNA replication, to generate gamete cells with half the original chromosomal complement
We argue that the effect of temperature on recombination may not be a directly adaptive plastic response so much as an unavoidable consequence of the biophysical properties of the proteins that orchestrate key aspects of meiotic recombination
Though the details may differ, there is a common trend across eukaryotes that temperature can affect recombination rates and positions, as well as cause outright structural failures in meiosis
Summary
Meiosis is a special division during which a cell undergoes two sequential rounds of chromosome segregation with no intervening DNA replication, to generate gamete cells with half the original chromosomal complement. Temperature affects the core processes of meiosis which are directly relevant to recombination in at least two important ways: first, temperature is known to alter both the frequency and placement of crossover events, and second, at greater extremes, it can cause disruptions of core structures of the axis and SC that lead to failures in chromosome pairing, synapsis, recombination and segregation [7,8,9] (reviewed in [10,11]). Though effects of temperature on meiosis are similar across many eukaryotes and likely constrained by conserved aspects of protein function, the thresholds for meiotic failure as well as the precise temperature ranges that alter recombination vary across species [7]. Because recombination and thermotolerance might often be coupled, we expect that in those cases in which selection does act directly on recombination rate, thermotolerance may be altered as a pleiotropic effect, and vice versa
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