The basis of decreased recombination in certain outcrosses of Neurospora crassa

Crossing over in a multiply marked segment of linkage group I was conspicuously reduced in outcrosses between a marked laboratory strain and each of six unrelated wild-collected strains, compared with crosses between inbred laboratory strains. The marked chromosome segment was transferred intact from the inbred strain to one of the wild-collected strains by seven recurrent backcrosses, and conversely, the corresponding segment of the wild strain was transferred to the inbred background by backcrossing to the multiply marked laboratory strain. Recombination was then monitored in crosses from parents having the marked and unmarked chromosome segments from the same or from unrelated sources. Meiotic crossing-over in the marked segment remained low in crosses between parents that were dissimilar with respect to genetic background, but crossing over was restored to a high level when the genetic background of both parents was that of the inbred laboratory strain, regardless of the source of the marked segments. Reduced recombination in outcrosses was therefore not due to heterologies in the marked segment but must be attributed to modifiers that are unlinked or distant from the monitored region.