Physical mapping of meiotic crossover events in a 200-kb region of Neurospora crassa linkage group I.

We propose a general restriction fragment length polymorphism-based strategy to analyze the distribution of meiotic crossover events throughout specific genetic intervals. We have isolated 64 recombinant chromosomes carrying independent meiotic crossover events in the genetic interval eth-1-un-2 on linkage group I of Neurospora crassa. Thirty-eight crossover events were physically mapped with reference to a 200-kb region cloned by chromosome walking, using N. crassa lambda and cosmid libraries. Crossovers were homogeneously distributed at intervals of 5.0 +/- 2.3 kb along the entire cloned interval. The ratio of physical to genetic distance appears to be higher in the region than in the overall N. crassa genome, suggesting that recombinational activity is less in large chromosomes than in small ones. The present work provides a method for defining the centromeric-telomeric orientation of single cloned DNA fragments. Their physical distance can also be estimated with respect to linked loci, provided that crossover events are distributed homogeneously in the interval. This strategy overcomes typical difficulties in defining the position and direction of chromosome walking steps on conventional linkage maps.