Molecular mechanisms of recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: testing mitotic and meiotic models by analysis of hypo-rec and hyper-rec mutations.

Recombination in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been the subject of extensive genetic studies documenting the general properties of intragenic and intergenic recombination and the differences between mitotic and meiotic gene conversion and reciprocal exchange. Spontaneous mitotic and meiotic events differ in the time of onset of recombination relative to chromosomal replication, symmetry versus asymmetry of putative heteroduplex DNA regions, polarity of conversion of intragenic markers, and the lengths of DNA segments that undergo coincident conversion. The differences observed and the properties of yeast rec mutations provide evidence for multiple modes or pathways of mitotic and meiotic recombination. Several molecular models of recombination have been proposed to account for the basic parameters of genetic recombination and the differences between mitotic and meiotic recombination. Since the models differ with respect to the partial reactions comprising recombination they predict the isolation of different classes of hypo-recombination and hyper-recombination rec mutants. We have isolated a broad spectrum of yeast REC gene mutations that includes both hyper-rec and hypo-rec mutants. Five phenotypic classes of rec variants have been identified based upon their effects on spontaneous mitotic gene conversion and intergenic recombination. Their characteristics demonstrate that mitotic gene conversion and intergenic recombination are under independent as well as coordinate genetic control. Four gene mutations affecting recombination rad50, rad52, rem1 and spo11 have been extensively examined in several laboratories and illustrate the information that can be obtained by characterization of double mutant strains, detailed genotypic analysis of recombinants, and studies of meiotic recombination in cells in which the reductional division of meiosis has been bypassed by the spo13 mutation.