Per-nucleus crossover covariation is regulated by chromosome organization
Cunxian Fan,
Xiao Yang,
Hui Nie,
Shunxin Wang,
Liangran Zhang
Affiliations
Cunxian Fan
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resistance Biology, College of Life Sciences, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong 250014 China
Xiao Yang
Center for Reproductive Medicine, School of Medicine, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China
Hui Nie
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resistance Biology, College of Life Sciences, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong 250014 China
Shunxin Wang
Center for Reproductive Medicine, School of Medicine, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China; National Research Center for Assisted Reproductive Technology and Reproductive Genetics, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, China; Key Laboratory of Reproductive Endocrinology of Ministry of Education, Jinan, Shandong 250001, China; Shandong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Reproductive Health, Jinan, Shandong 250012, China; Corresponding author
Liangran Zhang
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resistance Biology, College of Life Sciences, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong 250014 China; Center for Reproductive Medicine, School of Medicine, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China; Advanced Medical Research Institute, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, China; State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China; Corresponding author
Summary: Meiotic crossover (CO) recombination between homologous chromosomes regulates chromosome segregation and promotes genetic diversity. Human females have different CO patterns than males, and some of these features contribute to the high frequency of chromosome segregation errors. In this study, we show that CO covariation is transmitted to progenies without detectable selection in both human males and females. Further investigations show that chromosome pairs with longer axes tend to have stronger axis length covariation and a stronger correlation between axis length and CO number, and the consequence of these two effects would be the stronger CO covariation as observed in females. These findings reveal a previously unsuspected feature for chromosome organization: long chromosome axes are more coordinately regulated than short ones. Additionally, the stronger CO covariation may work with human female-specific CO maturation inefficiency to confer female germlines the ability to adapt to changing environments on evolution.
