Physical detection of heteroduplexes during meiotic recombination in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We describe a general physical method for detecting the heteroduplex DNA that is formed as an intermediate in meiotic recombination in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We use this method to study the kinetic relationship between the formation of heteroduplex DNA and other meiotic events. We show that strains with the rad50, but not the rad52, mutation are defective in heteroduplex formation. We also demonstrate that, although cruciform structures can be formed in vivo as a consequence of heteroduplex formation between DNA strands that contain different palindromic insertions, small palindromic sequences in homoduplex DNA are rarely extruded into the cruciform conformation.