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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Mar 9.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2017 Mar 2;168(6):977–989.e17. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.02.002

Figure 1. CO formation and patterning via chromosome structure.

Figure 1

Prophase chromosomes comprise co-oriented sister linear loop arrays, along which DSBs occur in tethered loop-axis complexes (top line). DSBs mediate homolog pairing via inter-axis bridge ensembles (green lines), which are presumptively the undifferentiated precursors acted upon by CO-designation and accompanying interference (red arrows). Via this process, CO-designation events are evenly spaced along the chromosomes and their number scales with physical chromosome length (compare male versus female). In contrast to male (left), in female (right) ~25% of CO-designated interactions fail to finally mature into an actual CO (bottom line). See also Figure S1.