Genomic features shaping the landscape of meiotic double-strand-break hotspots in maize

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Significance Meiotic recombination is a process in plants, animals, and fungi during which chromosomes exchange their parts. It generates new genetic variation in the progeny and is one of the reasons why progeny are both similar to and different from their parents. Recombination is initiated by formation of breaks in chromosomal DNA. We generated a high-resolution map of sites where these breaks are formed in the genome of maize. Surprisingly, we found that DNA breaks are abundant in all genome regions, including sites where recombination was thought to be limited, such as repetitive DNA. The map will allow understanding of how recombination patterns shape the genome and aid development of more efficient breeding methods.