Insights Into the Role of Ubiquitination in Meiosis: Fertility, Adaptation and Plant Breeding

Ubiquitination is a post-translational modification process that plays a central role in protein degradation in eukaryotic cell cell division, including meiosis. This modification affects different cellular processes on a global scale by its pleiotropic ability to modify numerous proteins. Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction and involves two rounds of nuclear division following a single round of DNA replication to produce haploid gametes. Unlike mitosis, meiosis has a unique prophase I, which involves homologous chromosome interaction including pairing, synapsis, recombination and segregation. Over the last several decades, molecular genetic studies have identified many proteins that participate in meiotic progression. In this review, we focus on the recent advances regarding the role of ubiquitination during plant meiotic cell cycle progression and recombination, especially the role played by the Anaphase-Promoting Complex and E3 ligases in modulating crossover formation and its impact on evolution and plant breeding.