Gene conversion between duplicated genetic elements in yeast.

The mitotic recombination behaviour of a duplication of the his4 region on chromosome III in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was studied. The major recombination event between the duplicated segments is gene conversion unassociated with reciprocal recombination. The rad52-1 mutation preferentially decreases mitotic gene conversion. These results suggest that mitotic gene conversion may occur by a different pathway from that occurring in meiosis. This mitotic gene conversion may be important in yeast mating type interconversion and the maintenance of sequence homogeneity in families of repeated eukaryotic genes.