from David E. A. Catcheside, Frederick J. Bowring and P. Jane Yeadon writing in Neurospora: Genomics and Molecular Biology:
Beadle and Tatum's selection of Neurospora to test the hypothesis that genes encode proteins was strongly influenced by the life cycle of this filamentous fungus, which is particularly amenable to genetic experiments. Pertinent features for the student of recombination include two mating types and a mitotic division following meiosis prior to spore formation, yielding an ascus in which the position of each meiotic product mirrors the order of the eight DNA strands as they entered meiosis. This latter feature allows ready detection of rare recombination events. In this paper we review the contributions Neurospora has made to our understanding of recombination. These include the first unequivocal demonstration of gene conversion, fine structure maps of eukaryotic genes, evidence for polarity in gene conversion and identification of recombination hotspots (recombinators) and the genes that regulate them. More recent contributions come from analyses using knockouts of genes involved in recombination, a fluorescent recombination reporter system and whole octad sequencing to reveal genome-wide recombination.
Further reading: Neurospora: Genomics and Molecular Biology