RUBylation and meiotic recombination

Meiosis is an important step of sexual reproduction. It’s a modified cell cycle where two rounds of chromosomal segregation follow a single S phase. Based on recombination defects we have recently isolated two meiotic mutants previously involved in protein RUBylation: axr1 and sar3. RUBylation is an important pathway of protein regulation, but has never been involved in recombination control.
AXR1 encodes a subunit of the E1 enzyme of the RUBylation complex RUB1. It has been shown to be necessary for auxin perception via the SCF complex and axr1 has only been studied in regards to its auxin resistance phenotype. SAR3 encodes a nucleoporin and its depletion partially suppresses auxin resistance of axr1. To date, the meiotic defects of these two mutants have never been described.
This PhD project proposes to characterise the meiotic functions of the two proteins AXR1 and SAR3, to determine if other members of the RUBylation pathway are involved in meiosis regulation and to propose meiotic targets for RUBylation.

PhD subject IJPB 2010 from research group Meiosis and recombination