Multiple strand invasions can account for discontinuities seen in <i>mms4-md</i>.

<p>(A) Multiple strand invasions or (B) a defect in mismatch repair could potentially account for appearance of discontinuities in <i>mms4-md</i>. (C) Depiction of the various components of a discontinuous NCO event. (D) Box plot for tract lengths of simple NCOs (E1). The dark line in each box represents median length. Each box outlines lower and upper quartile. The whiskers denote minimum and maximum data and the circles outside the whiskers represent outliers (outside 1.5 times the inter quartile range). Values for the median length are given. (E) Box plot of event length for the entire discontinuous NCO. (F) Box plot of individual tract lengths within the discontinuous NCO. (G) Box plot of gap lengths between discontinuous NCOs. (H) Representation of observed discontinuous NCO events in <i>mms4-md</i>, <i>msh2</i> and <i>mms4-md msh2</i>. Note that discontinuous events only make up 24% of all NCOs in a <i>mms4-md</i> mutant.