Dipesh Kumar Singh, Rigel Salinas Gamboa, Avinash Kumar Singh, Birgit Walkemeier, Jelle Van Leene, Geert De Jaeger, Imran Siddiqi, Raphael Guerois, Wayne Crismani, Raphael Mercier
Nucleic Acids Research, gkac1244, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac1244
The Fanconi Anemia (FA) pathway is the subject of intense interest owing to the role of FA as a tumor suppressor. Three FA complex proteins, FANCM, MHF1, and MHF2, were identified as factors that suppress crossover during meiosis in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, the authors extended these findings and identified a novel anti-crossover factor and showed that it encodes the plant FANCC homolog, which was previously thought to be vertebrate-specific. They further showed that FANCC regulates meiotic crossover together with two other FA proteins, FANCE and FANCF. This suggests that the FANCC-E-F subcomplex was already regulating DNA repair in the common ancestor of all living eukaryotes.