Identification of a meiosis-specific chromosome movement pattern induced by persistent DNA damage

As one of the main events occurring during meiotic prophase, the dynamics of meiotic chromosome movement is not yet well understood. Currently, although it is well-established that chromosome movement takes an important role during meiotic recombination promoting the pairing between homologous chromosomes and avoiding excessive chromosome associations, it is mostly unclear whether those movements follow a particular fixed pattern, or are stochastically distributed. Using Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model organism, which exhibits dramatic meiotic nuclear oscillations, we have developed a computationally automatized statistical analysis of three-dimensional time-lapse fluorescence information in order to characterize nuclear trajectories and morphological patterns during meiotic prophase. This approach allowed us to identify a patterned oscillatory microvariation during the meiotic nuclear motion. Additionally, we showed evidence suggesting that this unexpected oscillatory motif might be due to the detection of persistent DNA damage during the nuclear movement, supporting how the nucleus also regulates its oscillations. Our computationally automatized tool will be useful for the identification of new patterns of nuclear oscillations during gametogenesis.