The dance floor of meiosis: evolutionary conservation of nuclear envelope attachment and dynamics of meiotic telomeres.

Abstract

Segregation of the homologous chromosomes is the most important feature of meiosis as it ensures the faithful haploidization of the genome. It essentially depends on an accurate prearrangement of chromosomes that culminates in a precise and unambiguous pairing of the homologs, which in turn is a prere - quisite for their correct segregation. Pairing with the right partner is accompanied by, moreover it implicitly requires characteristic chromosomal movements that, remarkably, appear to be driven by the chromosomal ends. In prophase I, telomeres firmly attach to the nuclear envelope and move to congregate in a small cluster, thus trailing homologs into close vicinity, a condition that was suggested to promote homolog recognition and alignment. The evolutionarily highly conserved phenomenon of the telomere driven meiotic chromosome rearrangement is yet known for a long time, but the molecular mechanisms responsible for telomere attachment and their directed movements have remained largely unknown. However, in the recent years significant progress has been made in this issue, which has provided some novel clues about the molecular requirements and function of the characteristic meiotic telomere dynamics.