During meiosis, homologous chromosomes pair, recombine, and segregate to opposite poles during the first meiotic division.

Crossover recombination lead to the formation of new combination of alleles and also form a physical connection between homologous chromosomes that hold them together until their segregation at meiosis I. We use budding yeast as a model organism to study the molecular mechanism of crossover formation, carry out genome-wide screens for factors that influence this process, and to study how the placement of crossovers affect homolog segregation at meiosis I.

In adult human oocytes, we study genome-wide recombination patterns and the link to chromosome segregation as well as age-related changes to chromosome structure. Overall, our aims are to understand why 30-70% of oocytes from women over 35 years of age are aneuploid (compared to 1% of sperm).