Meiotic crossing-over between sites on opposite sides of the centromeres of homoeologues is frequent in hybrid Aloeaceae

Abstract

During meiosis, long and short arms of acrocentric homoeologues pair and cross over in the centromere region in 95 (66.9%) of 142 hybrids of differing parentage in the monocotyledon family Aloeaceae. A characteristic configuration, the L–S bridge, is produced at anaphase I with frequencies ranging from <1 to 48% of pollen mother cells and in up to three bivalents per pollen mother cell. Too frequent to be due to inversion hybridity, L–S crossing-over most probably results from straight, noninverted pairing between nonhomologous proximal segments of the long and short chromosome arms following centromere mismatching in the heteromorphic bivalents. It is suggested that there are several lengths of DNA in different regions of homoeologous chromosomes, but perhaps concentrated around the centromere, that are sufficiently similar to recognize each other, pair, and cross over when brought together in a heteromorphic bivalent with mismatching of centromeres.Key words: Aloeaceae, hybrid, meiosis, nonhomologous pairing, crossing-over.