An Alternative Pathway for Meiotic Chromosome Segregation in Yeast

In meiosis I of most organisms, homologous chromosomes pair, recombine, and then segregate to opposite poles of the cell. Crossing-over is normally necessary to ensure the proper segregation of the homologs. Recently developed techniques have made it possible to study meiosis with highly defined artificial chromosomes. These techniques were used to demonstrate the existence of a system capable of segregating pairs of nonrecombined artificial chromosomes, regardless of the extent of their sequence homology. This system may contribute to the high fidelity of meiosis by mediating the segregation of pairs of natural chromosomes that have failed to recombine.