Genetic recombination, in the broadest sense, can be defined as any process in which DNA sequences interact and undergo a transfer of information, producing new recombinant sequences that contain information from each of the original molecules. All organisms have the ability to carry out recombination, and this striking universality speaks to the essential role recombination plays in a variety of biological processes fundamentally important to the maintenance of life. Such processes include DNA repair, regulation of gene expression, disease etiology, meiotic chromosome segregation, and...