Polyploid organisms provide additional opportunities to study meiosis in a more complex context since more than two potential homologous chromosomes are available. When the chromosome complement of a diploid individual is duplicated, each chromosome is accompanied by one identical and two homologous chromosomes within the same nucleus. In this situation, a competition in pairing/synapsis/chiasma formation between identical and homologous (but not necessarily identical) chromosomes can occur. Several studies have been conducted in different species to address whether there are preferences in crossover formation between identical rather than homologous chromosomes. In this study, multivalent and chiasma frequencies were cytologically analyzed in synthetic autotetraploids of Arabidopsis thaliana including the accessions Col, Ler, and the Col/Ler hybrid. Fluorescence in situ hybridization was conducted to identify each chromosome at metaphase I. The new Col and Ler tetraploids showed high multivalent frequencies, exceeding the theoretical 66.66% expected on a simple random end-pairing model, thus indicating that there are more than two autonomous synaptic sites per chromosome despite their small size. However, a significant excess of bivalent pairs was found in the Col/Ler hybrid, mainly due to the contribution of chromosomes 2 and 3. The mean chiasma frequencies of the three artificial autotetraploids were about twofold the corresponding mean cell chiasma frequencies of their diploid counterparts. The relative contribution of each chromosome to the total chiasma frequency was similar in the three genotypes, with the exception of a lower contribution of chromosome 3 in the hybrid. Preferences for chiasma formation between identical and homologous chromosomes were analyzed in Col/Ler 4x, taking advantage of the cytological differences between the accessions: variations in the size of the 45S rDNA region on the short arm of chromosome 2 and changes in the size and localization of the 5S rDNA region in chromosome 3. We observed a different behavior of chromosomes 2 and 3, i.e., random chiasma formation between identical and homologous chromosomes 2, and preferences for chiasma formation between homologous chromosomes 3. Hence, our results reveal the existence of chromosome-specific mechanisms responsible for these preferences.
Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana; autotetraploids; chiasma; homologous chromosomes; meiosis.