ArticleGenes & development1998
mei-W68 in Drosophila melanogaster encodes a Spo11 homolog: evidence that the mechanism for initiating meiotic recombination is conserved.
Article in Genes & development, 1998. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 143 papers.
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Who cites it
143 citing papers in PubMed, 300 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparative single-nucleus transcriptomics reveals asymmetric evolution of the Drosophila male and female germlines.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Sex distorter male drive for resistance-resilient population control of the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cryptic sex in Leishmania depends on SPO11 paralogs.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Cryptic Sex inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A high-resolution crossover landscape in Drosophila santomea reveals rapid and concerted evolution of multiple properties of crossing over control.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Dynamics of recombination, X inactivation and centromere proteins during stick insect spermatogenesis.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Dichotomous transcriptome divergence at the cell-type level between thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Spo11: from topoisomerase VI to meiotic recombination initiator.Biochemical Society transactions · 2025Review
- Decoding the Nucleolar Role in Meiotic Recombination and Cell Cycle Control: Insights into Cdc14 Function.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Rbpms2 promotes female fate upstream of the nutrient sensing Gator2 complex component Mios.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Recurrent Duplication and Diversification of a Vital DNA Repair Gene Family Across Drosophila.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Divergence and conservation of the meiotic recombination machinery.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Rbpms2 promotes female fate upstream of the nutrient sensing Gator2 complex component, Mios.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Repair of DNA double-strand breaks in plant meiosis: role of eukaryotic RecA recombinases and their modulators.Plant reproduction · 2023Review
- Conserved meiotic mechanisms in the cnidarianScience advances · 2023Article
- A Brief History ofGenes · 2022Review
- Dynamic configurations of meiotic DNA-break hotspot determinant proteins.Journal of cell science · 2022Article
- High-resolution in situ analysis of Cas9 germline transcript distributions in gene-drive Anopheles mosquitoes.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
- Mitotic Antipairing of Homologous Chromosomes.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2022Article
83 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Meiotic recombination requires the action of several gene products in both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster. Genetic studies in D. melanogaster have shown that the mei-W68 gene is required for all meiotic gene conversion and crossing-over. We cloned mei-W68 using a new genetic mapping method in which P elements are used to promote crossing-over at their insertion sites. This resulted in the high-resolution mapping of mei-W68 to a <18-kb region that contains a homolog of the S. cerevisiae spo11 gene. Molecular analysis of several mutants confirmed that mei-W68 encodes an spo11 homolog. Spo11 and MEI-W68 are members of a family of proteins similar to a novel type II topoisomerase. On the basis of this and other lines of evidence, Spo11 has been proposed to be the enzymatic activity that creates the double-strand breaks needed to initiate meiotic recombination. This raises the possibility that recombination in Drosophila is also initiated by double-strand breaks. Although these homologous genes are required absolutely for recombination in both species, their roles differ in other respects. In contrast to spo11, mei-W68 is not required for synaptonemal complex formation and does have a mitotic role.
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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.