Fig. 1: HEI10 protein dynamics in pachytene nuclei.
From: Diffusion-mediated HEI10 coarsening can explain meiotic crossover positioning in Arabidopsis
A HEI10 immuno-fluorescent intensity, focus number and position quantitatively measured along fully-synapsed bivalents in early, mid and late-pachytene nuclei stained for HEI10 (red), ZYP1 (green) and DAPI (blue), and imaged using 3D-SIM (images shown: maximum intensity projections of 3D image stacks). Representative images are shown. Data were collected from 75 early, 205 mid and 520 late pachytene bivalents for further analysis. Scale bars = 5 µm. B Left: total HEI10 intensity per bivalent, relative to total HEI10 bivalent intensity in the cell, plotted against bivalent SC length, relative to total measured SC length in the cell. Data (dots) coloured by pachytene stage (data from 75/205/520 bivalents for early/mid/late stages). Numbers in legend indicate R-squared values for linear regression. Middle left: same as left, but for HEI10 specifically in foci for late-stage cells, relative to sum of all HEI10 foci intensities in the cell (data from 370 bivalents). Middle right: same as middle left, but for late-stage cells with two HEI10 foci (data from 177 bivalents). Lines: linear regression best-fits (least-squares); colour-coded by stage. Right: distributions of HEI10 focus intensity for cases with 1, 2, 3 late HEI10 foci relative to sum of all HEI10 foci intensities in the cell. Numbers on right show (Bonferroni corrected) p-values from a one-sided Dunn’s test of multiple comparisons using rank sums, following a Kruskal–Wallis test \(({\chi }^{2}=160.3,df=2,p < 2.2\times {10}^{-16})\). Exact p-values are as follows: 1 vs 2 foci (Z = 8.6, p unadjusted = 7.1 × 10−18, p adjusted = 2.1 × 10−17), 1 vs 3 foci (Z = 12.5, p unadjusted = 8.4×10−36, p adjusted = 2.5×10−35), 2 vs 3 foci (Z = 6.5, p unadjusted = 6.6×10−11, p adjusted = 2.0×10−10). All pairwise comparisons are significant, with adjusted p-value < 0.0005. C From (A) HEI10 appears to show coarsening behaviour: HEI10 is distributed along the bivalents and at RIs (where it clusters into foci) at a fixed density (as suggested by data in B). As meiosis progresses, HEI10 distribution coarsens with larger foci growing at the expense of smaller foci. At late times, closely-spaced COs tend to be inhibited, reflecting COI. Source data are provided as a source data file.
