Landscaping Crossover Interference Across a Genome

The evolutionary success of eukaryotic organisms crucially depends on the capacity to produce genetic diversity through reciprocal exchanges of each chromosome pair, or crossovers (COs), during meiosis. It has been recognized that COs arise more evenly across a given chromosome than at random. This phenomenon, termed CO interference, occurs pervasively in eukaryotes and may confer a selective advantage. We describe here a multipoint linkage analysis procedure for segregating families to quantify the strength of CO interference over the genome, and extend this procedure to illustrate the landscape of CO interference in natural populations. We further discuss the crucial role of CO interference in amplifying and maintaining genetic diversity through sex-, stress-, and age-induced differentiation.