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The work of Prof. Ziolkowski's team was published again in Nature Communications!

In January, another article by Prof. Piotr Ziolkowski's team from the AMU Faculty of Biology was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications. This time the research concerned the influence of DNA polymorphisms on the activity of recombination hotspots in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Every organism, reproducing sexually, has a double set of genes: one derived from the father and the other from the mother. The formation of gametes (in humans these are the egg cell and sperm) occurs during meiosis, which ensures that the genetic material is reduced by half. This ensures that when the egg cell and sperm combine, the offspring organism will also have a double set of genes.

During meiosis, crossing-over events occur that provide an exchange of genetic material between the parental chromosomes called meiotic recombination. The crossing-over phenomenon is one of the primary tools in the hands of breeders. It allows the shuffling of alleles of genes in crosses between different varieties and selection toward the appropriate trait. This is a lengthy process because crossing-overs tend to cluster in narrow chromosomal regions referred to as recombination hotspots. Both the number and distribution of crossing-overs are tightly controlled, and learning more about the factors affecting crossing-over could help speed up the process of improving a plant's performance value.

A major limitation in crossing-over research is the lack of efficient methods to map them with high resolution. Researchers at the Adam Mickiewicz University under the direction of Prof. Piotr Ziolkowski have developed a novel method, seed-typing, which makes it possible to identify where crossing-over has occurred with unprecedented resolution. The method is based on the use of very short intervals having at their ends reporter genes encoding green and red fluorescence proteins, which are expressed in seeds. If a crossing-over event occurs between the two reporter genes, the recombinant seeds can be easily identified under a microscope based on their fluorescence. Subsequent amplification of the interval between the two reporters and next-generation sequencing (NGS) leads to the identification of crossing-over sites based on single nucleotide polymorphisms occurring between the parents.

We congratulate the entire team and wish them continued success.

The article "The effect of DNA polymorphisms and natural variation on crossover hotspot activity in Arabidopsis hybrids" for all interested readers is available on Nature Communication Website.

Source: Uniwersyteckie.pl.