Meiotic cell division "the other way round"

Meiosis is not like another: Gabriela Cabral and Peter Schlögelhofer at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna dived into the process of meiosis in specific plant species and revealed that these plants display an inversion of the standard meiotic phases. The researchers describe the detailed mechanisms in the scientific . Meiosis is the two-step series of cell divisions that make sexual reproduction and genetic diversity possible.The coordination of the two meiotic chromosomal divisions (the reductional followed by the equational division) gives meiosis its distinctive characteristics: a reduction in the number of chromosomes by half, accompanied by mixing of parental chromosomes, and swapping of regions between homologous chromosomes (crossing over). Some species have developed their own strategy to ensure genetic diversity in their offspring with a variation of the "standard procedure", as PhD student Gabriela Cabral and group leader Peter Schlögelhofer at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) now show. The researchers examined meiosis in Rhynchospora pubera and R. tenuis - plants that are widely distributed in Gabriela Cabral's home country Brazil. "I started studying meiosis in these species already in the lab in Brazil and 'imported' the project to Austria in 2009 as part of my master project", says first author Gabriela Cabral. In the meantime, she switched to the Dammermann group at MFPL and works now as a PhD student on the model organism C. elegans , a nematode worm.