SUMMARY Inappropriate homologous recombination (HR) can cause gross chromosomal rearrangements that in mammalian cells may lead to tumorigenesis. In yeast, the Srs2 protein is an anti-recombinase that eliminates inappropriate recombination events, but the functional equivalent of Srs2 in higher eukaryotes has proven to be elusive. In this work, we identify C. elegans SPAR-1 as a functional analogue of Srs2 and describe its vertebrate counterpart, SPAR1/RTEL1, which is required for genome stability and tumour avoidance. We find that spar-1 mutant worms and SPAR1 knockdown human cells share characteristic phenotypes with yeast srs2 mutants, including inviability upon deletion of the sgs1/BLM homologue, hyper-recombination, and DNA damage sensitivity. In vitro, purified human SPAR1 antagonises HR by promoting the disassembly of D loop recombination intermediates in a reaction dependent upon ATP hydrolysis. We propose that loss of HR control following deregulation of SPAR1/RTEL1 may be a critical event that drives genome instability and cancer.

Meiotic crossovers (COs) are tightly regulated to ensure that COs on the same chromosome are distributed far apart (crossover interference, COI) and that at least one CO is formed per homolog pair (CO homeostasis). CO formation is controlled in part during meiotic double-strand break (DSB) creation in Caenorhabditis elegans, but a second level of control must also exist because meiotic DSBs outnumber COs. We show that the antirecombinase RTEL-1 is required to prevent excess meiotic COs, probably by promoting meiotic synthesis-dependent strand annealing. Two distinct classes of meiotic COs are increased in rtel-1 mutants, and COI and homeostasis are compromised. We propose that RTEL-1 implements the second level of CO control by promoting noncrossovers.

Homologous recombination (HR) is essential for the repair of blocked or collapsed replication forks and for the production of crossovers between homologs that promote accurate meiotic chromosome segregation. Here, we identify HIM-18, an ortholog of MUS312/Slx4, as a critical player required in vivo for processing late HR intermediates in Caenorhabditis elegans. DNA damage sensitivity and an accumulation of HR intermediates (RAD-51 foci) during premeiotic entry suggest that HIM-18 is required for HR–mediated repair at stalled replication forks. A reduction in crossover recombination frequencies—accompanied by an increase in HR intermediates during meiosis, germ cell apoptosis, unstable bivalent attachments, and subsequent chromosome nondisjunction—support a role for HIM-18 in converting HR intermediates into crossover products. Such a role is suggested by physical interaction of HIM-18 with the nucleases SLX-1 and XPF-1 and by the synthetic lethality of him-18 with him-6, the C. elegans BLM homolog. We propose that HIM-18 facilitates processing of HR intermediates resulting from replication fork collapse and programmed meiotic DSBs in the C. elegans germline.

Commentary 501 IntroductionMeiosis is the specialised reductive division that generates haploid cells. During this process, a single round of replication is followed by two rounds of chromosome segregation: in the first division (meiosis I), homologous chromosomes segregate, whereas in the second division, sister chromatids segregate (meiosis II). A key step in meiosis I is the recognition of homologous chromosomes, which then align and pair along the length of the chromosome. Once homologues have aligned, synapsis can proceed with the formation of the synaptonemal complex (SC), a protein structure that supports and maintains homologues in close juxtaposition and serves as a scaffold for crossover-promoting recombination factors. Meiotic crossing over involves the generation of meiotic doublestrand breaks (DSBs), which are subsequently repaired either as crossovers or non-crossovers (Fig. 1). Meiotic recombination is not only necessary to create new allele combinations that generate genetic diversity, but is also essential in ensuring accurate chromosome segregation at the first meiotic division because the crossover acts as a tether between homologues, which ensures that each homologue will properly align at the metaphase plate and thereby correctly attach to the spindle. DSB repair occurs concurrently with SC formation and is required for normal synapsis in yeast and mice (Baudat et al., 2000;Roeder, 1997;Romanienko and Camerini-Otero, 2000), whereas in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster, homologue pairing and SC formation can occur independently of meiotic recombination (Colaiacovo et al., 2003; Dernburg et al., 1998;Liu et al., 2002;McKim et al., 1998).The process of meiotic recombination is initiated when meiotic DSBs are created by the endonuclease SPO11, in conjunction with a number of additional proteins (Keeney and Neale, 2006). DSBs are then resected to generate 3Ј single-strand DNA (ssDNA) overhangs that are initially bound by replication protein A (RPA), which is subsequently displaced by the recombinase radiation sensitive 51 (RAD51) and/or the meiosis-specific recombinase dosage suppressor of Mck1 (DMC1) to form nucleoprotein filaments. These filaments serve to find a complimentary sequence within a homologous chromosome, at which they instigate singleend strand invasions (Hunter and Kleckner, 2001) to generate socalled displacement loop (D loop) recombination intermediates ( Fig. 1). If the second end of the original DSB binds with the homologous chromosome, a double Holliday junction is formed, which can be resolved to generate either a non-crossover or an interhomologue crossover, the latter of which is hereafter referred to simply as crossover (Bishop and Zickler, 2004;Schwacha and Kleckner, 1995). Double Holliday junctions can also be processed through dissolution, which results in a non-crossover ( Fig. 1) (Wu and Hickson, 2003). Meiotic non-crossovers have also been proposed to form when strand invasion is transient, and when a limited amount of DNA synthesis occurs befor...