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Breaking a species barrier by enabling hybrid recombination

Bozdag, GO; Ono, J; Denton, JA; Karakoc, E; Hunter, N; Leu, J-Y; Greig, D; (2021) Breaking a species barrier by enabling hybrid recombination. Current Biology , 31 (4) R180-R181. 10.1016/j.cub.2020.12.038. Green open access

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Abstract

Hybrid sterility maintains reproductive isolation between species by preventing them from exchanging genetic material1. Anti-recombination can contribute to hybrid sterility when different species' chromosome sequences are too diverged to cross over efficiently during hybrid meiosis, resulting in chromosome mis-segregation and aneuploidy. The genome sequences of the yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus have diverged by about 12% and their hybrids are sexually sterile: nearly all of their gametes are aneuploid and inviable. Previous methods to increase hybrid yeast fertility have targeted the anti-recombination machinery by enhancing meiotic crossing over. However, these methods also have counteracting detrimental effects on gamete viability due to increased mutagenesis2 and ectopic recombination3. Therefore, the role of anti-recombination has not been fully revealed, and it is often dismissed as a minor player in speciation1. By repressing two genes, SGS1 and MSH2, specifically during meiosis whilst maintaining their mitotic expression, we were able to increase hybrid fertility 70-fold, to the level of non-hybrid crosses, confirming that anti-recombination is the principal cause of hybrid sterility. Breaking this species barrier allows us to generate, for the first time, viable euploid gametes containing recombinant hybrid genomes from these two highly diverged parent species.

Type: Article
Title: Breaking a species barrier by enabling hybrid recombination
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.12.038
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.12.038
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10124814
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