FISSION YEAST TAZ1 PROTEIN IS REQUIRED FOR MEIOTIC TELOMERE CLUSTERING AND RECOMBINATION

The alignment of homologous chromosomes during meiosis is essential fo r their recombination and segregation. Telomeres form and protect the ends of eukaryotic linear chromosomes, and are composed of tandem repe ats of a simple DNA sequence and the proteins that bind to these repea ts(1-3). A role for telomeres in meiosis was suspected from observatio ns of telomere clustering in meiotic cells(4-7), and has now been supp orted experimentally by the dramatic rearrangement of telomere locatio ns during premeiotic stages in fission yeast(8,9). Here we show that t he fission yeast telomere protein, Tazl (ref. 10), is required for sta ble association between telomeres and spindle pole bodies during meiot ic prophase. In the absence of Tazl, telomere clustering at the spindl e pole bodies is disrupted, meiotic recombination is reduced, and both spore viability and the ability of zygotes to re-enter mitosis are im paired to a level that would be expected if chromosome segregation wer e occurring randomly. Such telomeric association mediated by telomere- specific proteins may also be important for proper chromosome alignmen t and recombination during meiosis in humans.