Aborting meiosis overcomes hybrid sterility
Preprint, 2020

Hybrids between species or diverged lineages contain fundamentally novel genetic combinations but an impaired meiosis often makes them evolutionary dead ends. Here, we explored to what extent and how an aborted meiosis followed by a return-to-growth (RTG) promotes recombination across a panel of 20 yeast diploid backgrounds with different genomic structures and levels of sterility. Genome analyses of 284 clones revealed that RTG promoted recombination and generated extensive regions of loss-ofheterozygosity in sterile hybrids with either a defective meiosis or a heavily rearranged karyotype, whereas RTG recombination was reduced by high sequence divergence between parental subgenomes. The RTG recombination preferentially occurred in regions with local sequence homology and in meiotic recombination hotspots. The loss-of-heterozygosity had a profound impact on sexual and asexual fitness, and enabled genetic mapping of phenotypic differences in sterile lineages where linkage or association analyses failed. We propose that RTG gives sterile hybrids access to a natural route for genome recombination and adaptation.

Author

Simone Mozzachiodi

University of Côte d'Azur

Lorenzo Tattini

University of Côte d'Azur

Agnès Llored

University of Côte d'Azur

Agurtzane Irizar

University of Côte d'Azur

Neža Škofljanc

University of Côte d'Azur

Melania D’Angiolo

University of Côte d'Azur

Matteo De Chiara

University of Côte d'Azur

Benjamin P. Barré

University of Côte d'Azur

Jia Xing Yue

University of Côte d'Azur

Angela Lutazi

University of Côte d'Azur

Sophie Loeillet

Université Paris PSL

Raphaelle Laureau

Université Paris PSL

Souhir Marsit

Université Paris PSL

University of Montpellier

Simon Stenberg

University of Gothenburg

Benoit Albaud

Institut Curie

Karl Persson

University of Gothenburg

Jean-Luc Legras

University of Montpellier

Sylvie Dequin

University of Montpellier

Jonas Warringer

University of Gothenburg

Alain Nicolas

Université Paris PSL

Gianni Liti

University of Côte d'Azur

Subject Categories

Evolutionary Biology

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Microbiology

Bioinformatics and Systems Biology

Genetics

DOI

10.1101/2020.12.04.411579

More information

Latest update

8/11/2022