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Abstract:
Sexual eukaryotes fall into two groups with respect to their RecA-like recombinases. The first group possesses Rad51 (ubiquitous) and Dmc1 (meiosis-specific), which cooperate to conduct interhomolog recombination in zygotes with high sequence heterogeneity. Inter- estingly, Dmc1 was lost from the second group of eukaryotic organisms. Here we used the industrial workhorse fungus Trichoderma reesei to address if and how Rad51-only eukaryotes carry out hybrid meiosis. We show that T. reesei Rad51 (TrRad51) is indispensable for interhomolog recombination during meiosis and that TrRad51, like Saccharomyces cerevisiae Dmc1, possesses a better mismatch tolerability than S. cerevisiae Rad51. Our results indicate that the ancestral TrRad51 evolved to acquire Dmc1-like properties by adopt- ing multiple structural variations in the L1 and L2 DNA-binding loops (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/8/e2007192118).
