Meiotic recombination initiation hotspots in Arabidopsis genes and transposons (SPO11-1-oligonucleotides-seq)

To determine meiotic recombination initiation sites in Arabidopsis thaliana genome we purified and sequenced oligonucleotides (35-45 nt) bound to SPO11-1, meiosis specific transesterase that induces meiotic DSB formation. This reveals that SPO11-1-oligonucleotide hotspots occur at nucleosome depleted regions of gene promoters, introns, terminators and specific families of DNA transposons (recomposons). To investigate the influence of chromatin structure and epigenetic factors on meiotic DSB formation we performed sequencing of SPO11-1-oligonucleotides in arp6, met1 and suvh4 suvh5 suvh6.