What will happen to X and Y in the male meiotic prophase?
Akiko Inagaki
- afd Voortplanting
In meiosis, haploid gametes are generated from diploid cells. During the meiotic prophase, maternal and paternal homologous chromosomes pair, and part of the DNA from their homologous chromosomes is recombined. To achieve this meiotic recombination, a meiosis specific protein, Spo11, is essential. Spo11 is a member of topoisomerase, and creates double strand breaks (DSBs) on DNAs the in early meiotic prophase. To repair the Spo11-induced DSBs, homologous chromosomes search each other and form the synaptonemal complex: protein structure. In male meiosis, two heterologous X and Y chromosomes can pair only partially. Largely unpaired X and Y chromosomes form the so-called XY body. Spo11-induced DSBs persist and many repair-involved proteins associate with the XY body.
In this project, we visualize chromosome pairing by detecting one of the components of the synaptonemal complex, SYCP3, and research several proteins which are associated with the XY body (the lab project is English spoken).
