Asymmetrically distributed oligonucleotide repeats in the Caenorhabditis elegans genome sequence that map to regions important for meiotic chromosomesegregation

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has a haploid karyotype containing six linear chromosomes. The termini of worm chromosomes have been proposed to play an important role in meiotic prophase, either when homologs are partic ipating in a genome-wide search for their proper partners or in the initiat ion of synapsis. For each chromosome one end appears to stimulate crossing- over with the correct homolog; the other end lacks this property. We have u sed a bioinformatics approach to identify six repetitive sequence elements in the sequenced C. elegans genome whose distribution closely parallels the se putative meiotic pairing centers (MPC) or homolog recognition regions (H RR). We propose that these six DNA sequence elements, which are largely chr omosome specific, may correspond to the genetically defined HRR/MPC element s.