zinc finger binding motifs do not explain recombination rate variation within or between species of drosophila锌指绑定图案不能解释或物种之间的果蝇内部重组率的差异.pdfVIP

Zinc Finger Binding Motifs Do Not Explain Recombination Rate Variation within or between Species of Drosophila Caiti S. S. Heil*, Mohamed A. F. Noor Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America Abstract In humans and mice, the Cys His zinc finger protein PRDM9 binds to a DNA sequence motif enriched in hotspots of 2 2 recombination, possibly modifying nucleosomes, and recruiting recombination machinery to initiate Double Strand Breaks (DSBs). However, since its discovery, some researchers have suggested that the recombinational effect of PRDM9 is lineage or species specific. To test for a conserved role of PRDM9-like proteins across taxa, we use the Drosophila pseudoobscura species group in an attempt to identify recombination associated zinc finger proteins and motifs. We leveraged the conserved amino acid motifs in Cys His zinc fingers to predict nucleotide binding motifs for all Cys His zinc finger proteins 2 2 2 2 in Drosophila pseudoobscura and identified associations with empirical measures of recombination rate. Additionally, we utilized recombination maps from D. pseudoobscura and D. miranda to explore whether changes in the binding motifs between species can account for changes in the recombination landscape, analogous to the effect observed in PRDM9 among human populations. We identified a handful of potential recombination-associated sequence motifs, but the associations are generally tenuous and their biological relevance remains uncertain. Furthermore, we found no evidence that changes in zinc finger DNA binding explain