The switching gene swi6 affects recombination and gene expression in the mating-type region of Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

The products of 11 switching (swi) genes are required for efficient mating-type (MT) switching in homothallic (h90) strains of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The MT region of h90 comprises three cassette genes: the expression site mat1:1 and two silent loci, mat2:2 and mat3:3. Besides reducing MT switching, the swi6 mutation leads to deletions in the MT region caused by intrachromosomal cross-overs between two paired cassettes. These deletions only arise if DNA double-strand breaks are present at mat1:1, which initiate MT switching. Furthermore, swi6 allows meiotic recombination in the K region, a region of 16 kb between mat2:2 and mat3:3; in wild-type strains no recombination occurs in K. swi6 also allows the simultaneous expression of two different cassettes in the same haploid cell. Thus swi6 may have an influence on the general chromatin structure in the MT region.