ABSTRACT
Telomeres, the natural ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, are essential for the protection of chromosomes from end-to-end fusions, recombination, and shortening. Here we explore their role in the process of meiotic division in the budding yeast, Kluyveromyces lactis. Telomerase RNA mutants that cause unusually long telomeres with deregulated structure led to severely defective meiosis. The severity of the meiotic phenotype of two mutants correlated with the degree of loss of binding of the telomere binding protein Rap1p. We show that telomere size and the extent of potential Rap1p binding to the entire telomere are irrelevant to the process of meiosis. Moreover, we demonstrate that extreme difference in telomere size between two homologous chromosomes is compatible with the normal function of telomeres during meiosis. In contrast, the structure of the most terminal telomeric repeats is critical for normal meiosis. Our results demonstrate that telomeres play a critical role during meiotic division and that their terminal cap structure is essential for this role.