Athanasia Tzika participates to a study headed by Molly Przeworski at Columbia University (NY, USA) on meiotic recombination in snakes.
In many mammals, recombination occurs almost exclusively where the protein PRDM9 binds, whereas in vertebrates lacking an intact PRDM9, such as birds and canids, recombination rates are elevated near promoter-like features. To determine whether PRDM9 directs recombination in non-mammalian vertebrates, the authors focused on an exemplar species with a single, intact PRDM9 ortholog, the corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus). Analyses of historical recombination rates along the genome and crossovers in pedigrees generated by Athanasia Tzika at the LANE in the University of Geneva, identified that both PRDM9 and promoter-like features specify the location of recombination events. But they also detected a separable effect of promoter-like features. These findings reveal that the uses of PRDM9 and promoter-like features need not be mutually exclusive and instead reflect a tug-of-war that is more even in some species than others.
Additional information is provided in the original article:
Patterns of recombination in snakes reveal a tug-of-war between PRDM9 and promoter-like features
C. Hoge, M. de Manuel, M. Mahgoub, N. Okami, Z. Fuller, S. Banerjee, Z. Baker, M. McNulty, P. Andolfatto, T. S. Macfarlan, M. Schumer, A. C. Tzika & Molly Przeworski
Science 383, 846 (2024)