Foldback inversions are induced by a DNA double-strand break near natural inverted repeats in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Foldback priming at naturally occurring inverted repeats is proposed to initiate formation of large, inverted duplications, the major class of chromosome rearrangement recovered from cells lacking Mre11 nuclease activity. Here, we show that a double-strand break (DSB) induced near natural short, inverted repeats drives high frequency inverted duplication in Sae2 and Mre11-deficient cells.