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MLH1p and MLH3p Localize to Precociously Induced Chiasmata of Okadaic-Acid-Treated Mouse Spermatocytes
Edyta Marcona and Peter Moensaa Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada
Corresponding author: Peter Moens, York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada., moens{at}yorku.ca (E-mail)
Communicating editor: R. S. HAWLEY
| ABSTRACT |
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With the phosphatase inhibitor, okadaic acid, we induce the precocious onset of the chiasmate stage and under those conditions show that the recombination nodules, MLH1 and MLH3 foci, are localized to the chiasmata. It is concluded that MLH1/3 foci are appropriate markers for the studies of crossovers/chiasmata development and distribution at late meiotic prophase.
FROM the correlation between crossover distribution and the distribution of synaptonemal complex (SC)-associated dense bodies in oocytes of wild-type and recombination-defective Drosophila melanogaster females, ![]()
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The discovery that MLH1 and MLH3 foci (Escherichia coli MutL DNA repair homologs) of meiotic prophase chromosome cores/SCs correlate with the known frequency and distribution of crossovers/chiasmata in male and female mice and humans (![]()
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Although the results of those studies are reliable and convincing, there is uncertainty about the exact relationship among chiasmata/crossovers, RNs, and MLH1/3 foci. The difficulty in the verification of this relationship is that under normal meiotic prophase development, RNs and MLH1/3 foci are observable mostly prior to the formation of mature chiasmata. Occasionally, MLH1/3 immunofluorescent foci have been detected in stretches of synapsed cores of bivalents that have initiated separation of the cores (![]()
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To provide formal proof that the MLH1/3 foci are consistently associated with RNs at the sites of chiasmata, we circumvent the chronological disparity between RN-MLH1/3 presence and chiasma detection by inducing a precocious chiasmate diplotene stage with the phosphatase inhibitor, okadaic acid (OA; ![]()
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Purified zygotene/early pachytene spermatocytes were prepared according to ![]()
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The isolation procedures and the OA treatment at 0 and 1 hr do not affect the detection of immunofluorescent MLH1 foci (Fig 4A and Fig B) and MLH3 foci (Fig 4C and Fig D). These two types of foci have been shown to colocalize (![]()
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RN-MLH1 structures can be identified in electron micrographs of control and okadaic-acid-treated spermatocytes (Fig 5, AC). At 0 hr OA treatment, the SCs have the normal appearance of two parallel aligned lateral elements and they contain one or two electron-dense RNs, which are recognized by the anti-MLH1p antibody (Fig 5A and inset). At 2 hr OA treatment, the chromosome cores have initiated separation and the RN-MLH1 structure is at the site where the cores are still held together (Fig 5B and inset). At 4 hr OA treatment, the cores are fully separated and the RN-MLH1 structure is present between the cores where they converge (Fig 5C and inset). These results show that MLH1p is present at the RNs and chiasmata and therefore support the idea that immunofluorescent MLH1 foci may be used as the markers for crossovers and chiasmata.
The precocious onset of OA-induced chromosome core separation at the time that MLH1/3 foci are still fully observable provides the opportunity to immunocytologically demonstrate the localization of RN-MLH1/3 structures to the sites of mature chiasmata of a given spermatocyte nucleus (Fig 6). In classical chiasmate diplotene bivalents, the interstitial chiasmata are characterized by inflections of the separated chromosomes/cores and terminal chiasmata by convergence of the terminal segments of the chromosomes/cores (Fig 1 and Fig 3; ![]()
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During the progression from early diplotene to metaphase I, the numbers of MLH1/3 foci are reduced from
26 to 0. The percentage of okadaic-acid-induced diplotene nuclei with high, medium, and numbers of foci examined is shown in Fig 7. For MLH1p, 165 nuclei were analyzed and, for MLH3p, 84 nuclei. Most of the MLH1 foci are present in association with the precociously induced chiasmate state of the two nuclei at 2 hr of OA treatment (Fig 6A). At a higher magnification, it is evident that the MLH1 foci are present between the inflections of the cores in Fig 6B and Fig C, for MLH1p and in Fig 6G and Fig H, for MLH3p. MLH1 foci are at the points of last contact in Fig 6D–F. These observations constitute the formal proof that immunofluorescent MLH1/3 foci mark the sites of crossover/chiasmata.
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
|---|
We thank Barbara Spyropoulos at York University and Nadine Kolas and Paula Cohen at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, for their contributions to the experiments and the manuscript preparation. This research is funded by a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant to P.M.
Manuscript received December 5, 2002; Accepted for publication January 31, 2003.
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