INFORMATIONAL TRANSFER IN MEIOTIC GENE CONVERSION

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Abstract
Aberrant meiotic segregations attributable to intragenic events have been analyzed in an unselected sample of 1611 tetrads from three heteroallelic diploids of Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Reciprocal recombination between alleles accounts for only a minor fraction of the total aberrant tetrads, while the majority component is represented by single- and double-site conversions. The frequency of double-site conversion is inversely related to the physical length of the interallelic interval. Since double-site conversions do not yield prototrophs, their occurrence leads to biased estimates of intragenic distances. Conversion is viewed as a process of informational transfer distinct from conventional crossing-over. The implications of the findings for genetic fine structure mapping and evolutionary theory are discussed briefly.