Deng W, Henriet S, Chourrout D.

Curr Biol. 2018 Sep 27. pii: S0960-9822(18)31132-1. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.08.048

Prevalence of Mutation-Prone Microhomology-Mediated End Joining in a Chordate Lacking the c-NHEJ DNA Repair Pathway.

In circularisation assays, the ratio between end-joining and homologous recombination is similar in O. dioica compared with other eukaryotes. Nevertheless, end-joining is more likely to concatenate than to circularise linear plasmids. The presence of microhomologies trigger microdeletions, consistend with the absence of the “classical” end-joining pathway. These microdeletions are much more frequent than in other organisms. Comparisons between Norvegian and Japanese strains suggest that the microdeletions could be part of the mechansism driving the compaction of O. dioica's genome.