Genetic and molecular analysis of recombination events in Saccharomyces cerevisiae occurring in the presence of the hyper-recombination mutation hpr1.

The hyper-recombination mutation hpr1 specifically increases mitotic intrachromatid crossovers, with no effect on other mitotic recombination events such as unequal sister chromatid exchange and plasmid-chromosome recombination, and no effect on meiotic recombination and a lesser effect on intrachromosomal gene conversion. The excision repair RAD1 gene is partially required for the expression on the hpr1 phenotype. The simplest hypothesis to account for some of the hpr1 stimulated recombination events is that a heteroduplex DNA intermediate and localized gene conversion are involved. hpr1 stimulated crossover events are independent of intrachromosomal gene conversion events stimulated by the hyper-gene conversion mutation hpr5. This result suggests that different intrachromosomal recombination processes are affected in each mutant strain. We propose that HPR1 may function to inhibit intrachromatid crossovers.