Rad51 mediated recombination during yeast meiosis requires the conserved helicase PIF1

We determined the effect that constitutive activation of Rad51 throughout meiotic prophase I in yeast has on the parental strand contributions in meiotic recombinants at a highly polymorphic test interval. Recombination in this test interval is initiated by a tightly-focused double strand break and the resulting recombinants can be assayed by pacbio sequencing of amplicons from the four spore colonies of individual tetrads (for details see Ahuja et al. Mol. Cell. 2021). To determine how activated Rad51 affects meiotic recombination, spore colonies from a diploid strain (homozygous for deletion of hed1, msh2, and for the RAD54T132A allele) were dissected and hotspot sequences were analyzed. Frequencies of gene conversion of markers within the interval were assayed. Please see the associated publication (Zeisel et al.) for further details.