 The discovery of Dmc1 in several species of Giardia , one of the earliest protists to diverge as a eukaryote , suggests that meiotic homologous recombination — and thus meiosis itself — emerged very early in eukaryotic evolution . In addition to research on Dmc1 , studies on the Spo11 protein have provided information on the origins of meiotic recombination . Spo11 , a type II topoisomerase , can initiate homologous recombination in meiosis by making targeted double @-@ strand breaks in DNA . Phylogenetic trees based on the sequence of genes similar to <unk> in animals , fungi , plants , protists and archaea have led scientists to believe that the version Spo11 currently in eukaryotes emerged in the last common ancestor of eukaryotes and archaea . 
