Negative supercoil senses temperature to modulate meiotic crossovers and chromosomes

Crossover recombination is a hallmark of meiosis, which holds the paternal and maternal chromosomes (homologs) together for their faithful separation, meanwhile, it promotes genetic diversity of progenies. The pattern of crossover is mainly controlled by the architecture of meiotic chromosomes. Environmental factors, especially temperature, also play an important role in modulating crossovers. However, it is unclear how temperature affects crossovers. Here, we examined the distributions of budding yeast axis components (Red1, Hop1, and Rec8) and the CO-associated Zip3 foci in detail in different temperatures, and found that both increased and decreased temperatures result in shorter meiotic chromosome axes and more crossovers. Further investigations showed that altered temperature coordinately enhanced the hyperabundant accumulation of Hop1 and Red1 on chromosomes and the number of Zip3 foci. Most importantly, temperature-induced alterations in axis distribution and Zip3 foci depend on the changes in DNA negative supercoil. These findings suggest that yeast meiosis senses temperature changes by increasing the level of negative supercoil to increase crossovers and modulate chromosome organization. These findings provide a novel view in understanding the effect and mechanism of temperature on meiosis recombination and chromosome organization, and thus also have an important implication in evolution and breeding. Overall design: ChIP-seq analysis of binding of Red1, Hop1, Rec8, Zip3 and TMP(marker of negative supercoils) in S. cerevisiae during meiosis.