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From: "Didier Vernade" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Recombination?
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 15:48:29 +0100
References: <20080207092745.LI2QB.60909.root@fepweb16>


John,
Crossover was (and is still) the term used to refer to the way chromosomes
pair together. Recombination is the same thing but at the molecular (DNA)
level. DNA recombination can occur aside of crossovers, it's more general.
For example, getting one copy up in an STR marker is a recombination event
but it's not the kind of recombination events promoted by crossovers. The
type of recombination promoted by crossovers is homologous recombination.

Didier


> I had never heard it called recombination before (at least not the event
they describe below). I had always heard the event described below
"crossover" (I think that's the name, but definitely not recombination.)
Can that be the order of magnitude discrepancy to which Ken refers?
> JAL
> Ken wrote
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <>
> To: <>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:50 AM
> Subject: [DNA] Scientific American column: How Our Genomes Control
Diversity
>
>
> > Recombination is the process that shuffles the DNA of parents before the
> > chromosomes are divvied up into sperm or egg, so that siblings end up
with
> > different combinations of genes from their grandparents on each
> > chromosome.
> >
> > The recombination rate is itself is at least partially under genetic
> > control,
> > according to two recent articles in pre-publication at Science magazine.
> > This
> > column from Scientific American is a summary (although I wonder if
there's
> > an
> > error when it refers to 40 recombination events per chromosome -- I
> > haven't
> > seen the full text of the article to see what units are being used).
> >
> >
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=genetic-processes-behind-human-diversity
>
> I hope you will track down that 40 recombos/ chromosome. That's an order
of
> magnitude greater than what was estimated before.
>
>
>
>
>
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