bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/821678; this version posted October 30, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. ZCWPW1 is recruited to recombination hotspots by PRDM9, and is essential for meiotic double strand break repair Authors: Daniel Wells1,2,†, Emmanuelle Bitoun1,2,†, Daniela Moralli1, Gang Zhang1, Anjali Gupta Hinch1, Peter Donnelly1,2, Catherine Green1, Simon R Myers1,2,*. 1The Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, Roosevelt Drive, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK. 2Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3LB, UK. †These authors contributed equally to this work. *Corresponding author. Email:
[email protected] bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/821678; this version posted October 30, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. Abstract During meiosis, homologous chromosomes pair (synapse) and recombine, enabling balanced segregation and generating genetic diversity. In many vertebrates, recombination initiates with double-strand breaks (DSBs) within hotspots where PRDM9 binds, and deposits H3K4me3 and H3K36me3. However, no protein(s) recognising this unique combination of histone marks have yet been identified. We identified Zcwpw1, which possesses H3K4me3 and H3K36me3 recognition domains, as highly co-expressed with Prdm9. Here, we show that ZCWPW1 has co-evolved with PRDM9 and, in human cells, is strongly and specifically recruited to PRDM9 binding sites, with higher affinity than sites possessing H3K4me3 alone.