Tuning Meiotic Checkpoints: Evolutionary Costs and Mechanistic Trade-Offs

In this review, we discuss three meiotic checkpoints—the DNA damage response, the pachytene checkpoint, and the spindle checkpoint—and highlight their similarities and differences across diverse systems. Cell cycle checkpoints play a unique and important role during meiosis by enforcing dependencies within the complex choreography that governs chromosome behavior during meiotic prophase and chromosome segregation. However, meiotic checkpoints can exhibit dramatic variations in their stringency, especially when compared with mitotic checkpoints. This range in stringency likely reflects the mechanistic trade-offs associated with the unique goals of meiosis, as well as the evolutionary constraints and innovations inherent to the process.