ArticleeLife2023
Down the Penrose stairs, or how selection for fewer recombination hotspots maintains their existence.
Article in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- PRDM9-mediated meiotic hotspot specification is constrained in humans despite extensive sequence diversity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- On the origin of PRDM9-guided recombination hotspots.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Why recombination hotspots?PLoS genetics · 2026Review
- Exploring Meiotic Recombination and Its Potential Benefits in South African Beef Cattle: A Review.Veterinary sciences · 2025Review
- PRDM9 drives the location and rapid evolution of recombination hotspots in salmonid fish.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Crossover frequencies in spermatocytes of Robertsonian homozygotes and heterozygotes of Mus musculus domesticus.Genetics and molecular biology · 2025Article
- The GC-content at the 5' ends of human protein-coding genes is undergoing mutational decay.Genome biology · 2024Article
- Understanding the Genetic Basis of Variation in Meiotic Recombination: Past, Present, and Future.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Review
- High prevalence of PRDM9-independent recombination hotspots in placental mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Divergence and conservation of the meiotic recombination machinery.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Bridging the gap between the evolutionary dynamics and the molecular mechanisms of meiosis: A model based exploration of the PRDM9 intra-genomic Red Queen.PLoS genetics · 2024Article
- Patterns of recombination in snakes reveal a tug-of-war between PRDM9 and promoter-like features.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Meiotic DNA breaks drive multifaceted mutagenesis in the human germ line.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Patterns of recombination in snakes reveal a tug of war between PRDM9 and promoter-like features.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In many species, meiotic recombination events tend to occur in narrow intervals of the genome, known as hotspots. In humans and mice, double strand break (DSB) hotspot locations are determined by the DNA-binding specificity of the zinc finger array of the PRDM9 protein, which is rapidly evolving at residues in contact with DNA. Previous models explained this rapid evolution in terms of the need to restore PRDM9 binding sites lost to gene conversion over time, under the assumption that more PRDM9 binding always leads to more DSBs. This assumption, however, does not align with current evidence. Recent experimental work indicates that PRDM9 binding on both homologs facilitates DSB repair, and that the absence of sufficient symmetric binding disrupts meiosis. We therefore consider an alternative hypothesis: that rapid PRDM9 evolution is driven by the need to restore symmetric binding because of its role in coupling DSB formation and efficient repair. To this end, we model the evolution of PRDM9 from first principles: from its binding dynamics to the population genetic processes that govern the evolution of the zinc finger array and its binding sites. We show that the loss of a small number of strong binding sites leads to the use of a greater number of weaker ones, resulting in a sharp reduction in symmetric binding and favoring new PRDM9 alleles that restore the use of a smaller set of strong binding sites. This decrease, in turn, drives rapid PRDM9 evolutionary turnover. Our results therefore suggest that the advantage of new PRDM9 alleles is in
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.