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Vol. 17, Issue 3, 1331-1343, March 2006

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The Arabidopsis thaliana PARTING DANCERS Gene Encoding a Novel Protein Is Required for Normal Meiotic Homologous Recombination

Asela J. Wijeratne ^*  , Changbin Chen  , Wei Zhang  , Ljudmilla Timofejeva  , and Hong Ma ^* 

^* Intercollege Graduate Program in Plant Physiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; Department of Biology and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; and Department of Gene Technology, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn 19086, Estonia

Submitted September 29, 2005; Revised December 2, 2005; Accepted December 27, 2005
Monitoring Editor: Kerry Bloom

Recent studies of meiotic recombination in the budding yeast and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana indicate that meiotic crossovers (COs) occur through two genetic pathways: the interference-sensitive pathway and the interference-insensitive pathway. However, few genes have been identified in either pathway. Here, we describe the identification of the PARTING DANCERS (PTD) gene, as a gene with an elevated expression level in meiocytes. Analysis of two independently generated transferred DNA insertional lines in PTD showed that the mutants had reduced fertility. Further cytological analysis of male meiosis in the ptd mutants revealed defects in meiosis, including reduced formation of chiasmata, the cytological appearance of COs. The residual chiasmata in the mutants were distributed randomly, indicating that the ptd mutants are defective for CO formation in the interference-sensitive pathway. In addition, transmission electron microscopic analysis of the mutants detected no obvious abnormality of synaptonemal complexes and apparently normal late recombination nodules at the pachytene stage, suggesting that the mutant's defects in bivalent formation were postsynaptic. Comparison to other genes with limited sequence similarity raises the possibility that PTD may present a previously unknown function conserved in divergent eukaryotic organisms.

Abbreviations used: CO, crossover; dHJ, double Holliday junction; DSB, double-strand break; LN, late recombination nodule; NCO, noncrossover; RT, reverse-transcription; T-DNA, transferred DNA; TEM, transmission electron microscope.

The online version of this article contains supplemental material at MBC Online (http://www.molbiolcell.org).

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Address correspondence to: Hong Ma (hxm16{at}psu.edu).