Re-engineering the zinc fingers of PRDM9 reverses hybrid sterility in mice

PRDM9 is a DNA-binding protein that controls the position of double-strand breaks in meiosis, and the gene that encodes it is responsible for hybrid infertility between closely related mouse species; this hybrid infertility is eliminated by introducing the zinc-finger domain sequence from the human version of the PRDM9 gene, a change which alters both the position of double-strand breaks and the symmetry of PRDM9 binding and suggests that PRDM9 may have a more general but transient role in the early stages of speciation.