Yeast spt6-140 mutation, affecting chromatin and transcription, preferentially increases recombination in which Rad51p-mediated strand exchange is dispensable.

We have shown that the spt6-140 and spt4-3 mutations, affecting chromatin structure and transcription, stimulate recombination between inverted repeats by a RAD52-dependent mechanism that is very efficient in the absence of RAD51, RAD54, RAD55, and RAD57. Such a mechanism of recombination is RAD1-RAD59-dependent and yields gene conversions highly associated with the inversion of the repeat. The spt6-140 mutation alters transcription and chromatin in our inverted repeats, as determined by Northern and micrococcal nuclease sensitivity analyses, respectively. Hyper-recombination levels are diminished in the absence of transcription. We believe that the chromatin alteration, together with transcription impairment caused by spt6-140, increases the incidence of spontaneous recombination regardless of whether or not it is mediated by Rad51p-dependent strand exchange. Our results suggest that spt6, as well as spt4, primarily stimulates a mechanism of break-induced replication. We discuss the possibility that the chromatin alteration caused by spt6-140 facilitates a Rad52p-mediated one-ended strand invasion event, possibly inefficient in wild-type chromatin. Our results are consistent with the idea that the major mechanism leading to inversions might not be crossing over but break-induced replication followed by single-strand annealing.