摘要：SummaryMeiotic crossover (CO) recombination between homologous chromosomes regulates chromosome segregation and promotes genetic diversity. Human females have different CO patterns than males, and some of these features contribute to the high frequency of chromosome segregation errors. In this study, we show that CO covariation is transmitted to progenies without detectable selection in both human males and females. Further investigations show that chromosome pairs with longer axes tend to have stronger axis length covariation and a stronger correlation between axis length and CO number, and the consequence of these two effects would be the stronger CO covariation as observed in females. These findings reveal a previously unsuspected feature for chromosome organization: long chromosome axes are more coordinately regulated than short ones. Additionally, the stronger CO covariation may work with human female-specific CO maturation inefficiency to confer female germlines the ability to adapt to changing environments on evolution.Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedHighlights•Crossover covariation is transmitted to progenies from meiocytes without selection•Human females have stronger crossover covariation because of longer axes•Long chromosomes have strong correlations between axis lengths and crossovers•Chromosomes with longer axes are more coordinately regulatedGenetics; Molecular genetics; Molecular biology; Cell biology
