title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: There are also several other prohibitions regarding positions of authority and acts of lewdness, as specified by Articles 342 and 343. Furthermore, there is a close-in-age exemption of 3 years age difference for indecent acts between persons younger than 15.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The Greek Constitution provides no definition of marriage. However, it does stipulate that, like motherhood and childhood, it must be under the protection of the State.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The former New Democracy-led Government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis was opposed to same-sex marriage. While it had introduced legislation that offered several rights to unmarried couples, this explicitly excluded same-sex couples.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The National Human Rights Committee proposed a registry that would cover both same-sex couples and unmarried opposite-sex ones and the Greek group OLKE announced its intention to sue Greek municipalities that refused to marry same-sex couples.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The Greek Government under George Papandreou, leader of Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), was preparing legislation for same-sex registered partnerships, which, however, never took place, as LGBT groups believed that they were going to be insufficient.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In November 2013, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the plaintiffs in the case "Valianatos and Others vs. Greece" and condemned the exclusion of same-sex couples from the option to contract cohabitation agreements, a non-marital relationship registration scheme established in 2008 for opposite-sex couples. The restriction of cohabitation agreements solely to opposite-sex couples was thus deemed non-convincing and the state was obliged to give a 5,000 euro compensation to each one of the plaintiffs.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Although there was no official recognition of same-sex couples at that time, a 1982 law that legalized civil marriage between "persons", without specifying gender, acted as a test-case for same-sex marriage. On 3 June 2008, the Mayor of Tilos, Anastasios Aliferis, married two same-sex couples, two lesbians and two gay men, citing the legal loophole. He was heavily criticized by clergymen of the Church of Greece, which in the past had also opposed the introduction of civil marriage. Justice Minister Sotirios Hatzigakis declared the Tilos marriages "invalid" and Supreme Court prosecutor Georgios Sanidas warned Mayor Aliferis of the legal repercussions of his "breach of duty", but he said he had "no intention of annulling the marriages". In May 2009, the marriage was officially annulled by the authorities.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Ιn December 2015, the Greek Parliament reintroduced a law draft that would expand cohabitation agreements to same-sex couples. Reactions varied from positive to negative, with many members of the Greek Church condemning the proposition. Most notably, Archbishop Ieronymos called homosexuality "a diversion from life", metropolitan Anthimos declared that "Not even animals have such dispositions" (but see Homosexual behavior in animals), metropolitan Seraphim said "Pawns of the international Zionism! The masculofeminine is being created!" whereas metropolitan Amvrosios stated "Spit on them! They're disgraceful! They're nature's abominations!" The latter, paired with Amvrosios' initiative to have the bells of the churches in his metropolis ring mournfully, stirred up much controversy, the result of which was a kiss-in protest by two LGBT activists dressed up in clergy clothes in front of the building of the Athens metropolis.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Finally, on 23 December, the draft concerning the enriched and improved cohabitation agreement legislation was passed (193 to 56) with a significant absence of 51 MPs, making Greece the 26th European country to adopt same-sex recognition laws. The largest groups to oppose the cohabitation agreement bill were the Communist Party of Greece, Golden Dawn and the Greek Orthodox Church. Simultaneously, the anachronistic article 347, criminalizing acts of "unnatural lewdness" between men was abolished, equalizing the age of consent for sex between men (now standing at 15 years of age both for heterosexual and homosexual sexual intercourse). Furthermore, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, while debating the law in Greek Parliament, issued an apology to the LGBT community for the years of discrimination they had faced. Civil marriage between same-sex individuals is still not permitted. Same-sex couples are not allowed to adopt children as well.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In December 2016, the Greek Parliament passed a bill expanding the rights of same-sex couples and ensuring equal protection in workplaces regardless of gender, religion or sexual orientation. Nevertheless, joint adoption, IVF access for lesbians and same-sex marriage have not yet been legalised.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Same-sex marriage is not currently legal in Greece, even though some government officials are in favour of it and have proposed legalization. In 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled that married same-sex couples have the same residency rights as married opposite-sex couples under EU law, even if same-sex marriage is not legal in that particular EU member state. The ruling affects all EU countries, which are obliged to abide by it, including Greece.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: As of 2021, opposition parties of the Hellenic Parliament, SYRIZA, Movement for Change (KINAL) and MeRA25, support the legalisation of same-sex marriages.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 17 June 2022, SYRIZA and its leader, the former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, submitted a historic draft bill promoting LGBT rights to the Greek Parliament. This draft bill legalizes the same-sex marriages and marriages regardless of gender, and the marriages may be both civil and religious, provided that the religion of the person permits it.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 17 April 2018, a bill, titled the "Child Adoption Law" (), aimed at overhauling and simplifying the country's child adoption legislation, which has been criticized in the past as being overly bureaucratic and ineffective and for its extremely slow procedures, was submitted to the Greek Parliament. The bill, and specifically Article 8, also grants same-sex couples the right to foster children. In a debate at a parliamentary committee, the bill's Article 8 was supported by the vast majority of the country's agencies, organizations, and experts, with the exception of the conservative Orthodox Church of Greece, which voiced its opposition to it. The bill as a whole, including Article 8, was voted "on principle" by the committee on early May 2018, with the support of Syriza, the Independent Greeks and The River. New Democracy (ND), Democratic Alignment (DISI) and the Union of Centrists (EK) abstained, whereas Golden Dawn voted against it, It was due for final ratification by Parliament. MPs from every political party of the Greek political spectrum expressed their support for Article 8 of the law, which concerns foster care for same-sex couples, with ND and DISI softening their initial hardline position towards it and announcing that any of their MPs are free to support the bill once it arrives at the parliamentary session for final ratification.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Eventually, the bill, including its Article 8, was ratified by the Greek Parliament on 9 May 2018, with 161 MPs voting in support and 103 against, making Greece the newest EU country, after Portugal in 2016, to legalize foster care for same-sex couples and the first country in Southeastern Europe to do so.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The 17 June 2022 draft bill submitted to the Greek Parliament by SYRIZA and its leader, the former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, grants recognition to both the Joint and stepchild adoption by same-sex couples, as well as the Altruistic and Commercial surrogacies for all couples.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: While there has been considerable legal progress, conservative social mores still hold some influence and the Orthodox Church has often denounced homosexuality as a sin and "defect of human nature."


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Greek law protects gender identity. According to "Law 3896 of 2010" (), discrimination on the basis of gender identity is considered equal to discrimination on the basis of sex and thus all laws regarding the latter also cover the former.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In September 2014, the "Law Against Racism and Xenophobia" () was amended. The changes stipulated that hate speech and violence against LGBT individuals or groups would be punished with imprisonment for three months to three years and a fine of 5,000 to 20,000 euros. If the actions have led to a crime, the penalty is increased by six months more imprisonment and an additional fine of 15,000 to 30,000 euros. If the final imprisonment exceeds one year, then the convict loses his/her political rights for one to five years. If the offender is a public worker, then they are punished with six months to three years imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 to 25,000 euros; if a crime is committed, they are punished with a fine of 25,000 to 50,000 euros. If the offender was committing the above representing an organisation or company, they are also fined. Entities in the public domain are, however, excluded from this last rule. This has led to criticism since the churches are also legal entities of the public domain, thereby excluding them from any consequences after the conviction of a priest of theirs. Furthermore, public prosecutors are given the freedom to move against the offenders even without a lawsuit from the victims, and if the victims file a lawsuit, they are allowed to do it free of charge, in contrast to the common practice.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Since 24 December 2015, Greece prohibits discrimination and hate crimes based on sex characteristics, which are among the strongest laws on the subject in Europe. On 2 December 2016, further anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender and religion in the workplace were passed by the Hellenic Parliament in a 201–21 vote with 5 abstaining and 73 absent. "PinkNews" described the law as one of the most rigid prohibitions of hate speech and hate crime in Europe.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Since October 2017, to change one's legal gender in Greece, the legal requirements are a forced divorce (if married, due to the inability of performing same-sex marriage) and a court order.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 10 October 2017, the Greek Parliament passed, by a comfortable majority, the "Legal Gender Recognition Law" (), which grants transgender people in Greece the right to change their legal gender freely by abolishing any conditions and requirements, such as undergoing any medical interventions, sex reassignment surgeries or sterilisation procedures to have their gender legally recognized on their IDs. The bill grants this right to anyone aged 17 and older. However, even underaged children between the age of 15 and 17 have access to the legal gender recognition process, but under certain conditions, such as obtaining a certificate from a medical council. The bill was opposed by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the Communist Party of Greece, Golden Dawn and New Democracy.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The "Legal Gender Recognition Law" followed a 20 July 2016 decision of the County Court of Athens, which ruled that a person who wants to change their legal gender on Registry Office files is no longer obliged to already have undergone sex reassignment surgery. This decision was applied by the Court on a case-by-case basis.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In February 2018, the Marousi County Court ruled in favor of Jason-Antigone Dane's request to have their male birth name, Jason, changed on Registry Office files to a gender-neutral one by adding the female name Antigone next to it. However, while the court did rule in favor of the person's request for displaying a gender-neutral name on their ID, it decided against having their legal gender entry changed from male to third gender, citing the "lack of a relevant institutional framework for individuals not classified in a distinct case of a non-dual gender identity (third gender entry)" in Greece, although the 2017 "Legal Gender Recognition Law" does state that "the person [hence every person] has the right to the recognition of his or her gender identity as an element of his or her personality". The plaintiff's lawyer announced that they will appeal part of the ruling to a higher court (the part concerning the third gender marker on IDs).


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In June 2018, a Greek court ruled that foreign transgender people, including refugees and immigrants, also have the right to the recognition of their gender identity, marking the first time that this right is extended beyond the definition of the 2017 "Legal Gender Recognition Law", which restricted this right to Greek citizens only.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Since July 2022, Greece legally banned surgery on intersex individuals under the age of 15 - unless a court order is approved or authorised.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 23 December 2016, the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs announced that, starting from 2017, a thematic week would be taking place every second semester of the school year. The thematic week seeks to inform students and their parents about, among others, issues such as sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, homophobia and transphobia. The Ministry will also consider enhancement of the thematic week in the future.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals are allowed to serve openly in the Hellenic Armed Forces.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 4 December 2021, the trans women detainees, upon their request, are relocated to correctional facilities for women, for the first time.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 17 March 2021, by decision of the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a committee was set up with the aim of drafting a National Strategy for the Equality of LGBTQI+ people in Greece. The Committee comes as a response to the European Commission's first ever strategy to protect the rights of LGBTIQ people in the European Union and its call to Member States to build on existing best practices and develop their own action plans on LGBTIQ equality on 12 November 2020. The Committee consists of academics, representatives of the civil society, representatives of the government and as a chairperson was appointed Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, a former President of the European Court for Human Rights.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Katerina Sakellaropoulou, who was elected as the first female President of Greece on 22 January 2020 by the Hellenic Parliament, is a supporter of LGBT rights. Alexis Patelis, the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's Chief Economic Adviser, came out in an interview, saying: "The Prime Minister has met my husband, I have met his wife", marking the first time that a high-ranking official came out publicly in Greece. Also, Nicholas Yatromanolakis is the first openly gay person to hold a ministerial rank in the Government of Greece, assuming office in the January 2021 government reshuffle.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Athens has a large number of LGBT associations and a developing gay village in the Gazi, Athens neighborhood. A pride parade event, the "Athens Pride" and an international Gay and Lesbian film festival, the "Outview", are held annually.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: There is also a large gay scene in Thessaloniki with gay/lesbian bars/clubs and several friendly mixed venues, and several LGBT organisations. In June 2012, the city got its own annual pride event (Thessaloniki Pride). One of the most notable events in Thessaloniki, concerning LGBT rights, is the attempt to raise a 20m long banner, urging people to boycott the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, on the city's most famous landmark, the White Tower. The attempt was quickly stopped by the local police, but the event was advertised in online media.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Greece is one of Europe's most popular LGBT tourist destinations, particularly its largest cities Athens and Thessalonica as well as several of its islands. The gay scene of Mykonos is well-known, with many establishments catering for the LGBT community. Lesbos also is famous internationally for its lesbian scene in Eressos.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The first attempt to organize a pride parade in Greece was made by AKOE (; Liberation Movement of Homosexuals of Greece) on 28 June 1980 in Athens, defining it as a political event. It was repeated two years later at the Zappeion Mansion. Numerous similar events took place over the following years, and in different locations. In 1992, 1994 and 1995, the events were held at Strefi Hill, whereas in 1996 and 1998 they were organized at the Pedion tou Areos. In 1998, it took place in an enclosed area. In Thessaloniki, the first corresponding event was organized by OPOTH (; Gay Friendly Group of Thessaloniki) in the 1990s.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Since then, LGBT events have been held in other cities, including in Heraklion, Patras, Santorini, Corfu and Mykonos. Thessaloniki was selected in 2017 to host EuroPride 2020.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The Athens Pride is an annual LGBT pride parade and festival held every June in the centre of Athens. It has been held 14 times:


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Thessaloniki staged its annual pride event for the first time in 22–23 June 2012, following Mayor Boutaris's promise to back a public LGBT event in the city. The first Thessaloniki Pride festival enjoyed massive popular support from the city, its periphery and the region, which was a heavy blow for the city's metropolitan Anthimos, who had called believers to react.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: One year later, in one of his announcements just a few days before the pride event of 2013, he stated that, the Holy Metropolis of Thessaloniki would once again have to tolerate the sad and unacceptable festival of the homosexuals who want to "celebrate their sickness in a carnival sort of way". He also asked parents to keep their children and themselves away from "such pointless and unnatural celebrations". However, many families were present and the two-day festival ended in a festive atmosphere with many parties, galleries and celebrations all around the city. The 2nd Thessaloniki Pride was dedicated to freedom of any kind, including the freedom of gender expression.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In 2014, Thessaloniki was the European Youth Capital and the 3rd Thessaloniki Pride was included to its official programme. Accordingly, it was dedicated to LGBT youth and their families. By general assessment the 2014 pride event was a major success, with the participation of 10,000 people in the parade, along with the Mayor Yiannis Boutaris and a block of diplomats. Some described it as best LGBT pride festival that Thessaloniki has ever had.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: That year, vigil masses took place along with gatherings of believers, where priests made an outcry over the "desecration of holy Thessaloniki", the "imposition of Islam and homosexuality by the New World Order, the gay pride events which are part of a Western conspiracy, the "appointment of homosexual male and female bishops and protested over the victory of Conchita Wurst at the Eurovision Song Contest. Metropolitan Anthimos once again made similar comments about it in an interview, deeming it as "disgraceful", "challenging", "a perversion of the human existence", adding that the Church orders to "Not give what is holy to dogs". He also claimed that the use of the term "festival" for the event is erroneous.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The first pride parade in Crete was held on 26–27 June 2015 in Heraklion, becoming the island's first "Festival for Gender and Sexuality Liberation Visibility".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Responding to government proposals in 2008 to introduce legal rights for cohabiting couples, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens, the leader of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece, suggested that "There is a need to change with the time". It is unclear, however, whether this view applied to same-sex couples, particularly as the Church has previously opposed gay rights in general and civil union laws in particular.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Following government talks in November 2013 regarding the legalisation of civil unions for homosexual couples, the Metropolitan of Piraeus Seraphim voiced vehement opposition against it, threatening that he can and will excommunicate any MPs who should vote for it. Moreover, he added that the bill "legalises the corruption of the human existence and physiology and cements the psychopathological diversion that is homosexuality". Additionally, he mentioned that such movements constitute "significant offenses of public decency" by sending out messages of "perverted sexual behaviours" to young people that "torpedo the foundations of family and society".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In August 2014, during discussions about the long-awaited vote for an anti-racism bill, several Metropolitans voiced their opposition to it due to certain articles pertinent to the criminalization of hate speech against, among others, homosexuals, with increased penalties for civil servants (members of the clergy included) who engage in it during their duties. The Metropolitan of Piraeus Seraphim accused the Greek PM, Antonis Samaras, of "selling his soul for a few extra months in office", criticized the draft law for "the introduction of other sexual orientations and other gender identities", the fact that the "psychopathological aversion and the inelegant mimicking of the other sex" would be protected by Greek law and compared homosexuality with paedophilia and bestiality.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The Metropolitan of Gortyna Ieremias, citing Bible passages, called homosexuals "dogs", argued that under the new bill "several prophets and Saints would be regarded as racists", and characterized it as a "horrible and deplorable" law while adding a homophobic word play. At the same time, the Metropolitan of Konitsa Andreas rejected the bill under the claim that it aims to "cover the perversion that is homosexuality". The religious reaction eventually resulted in Antonis Samaras accepting the church's objections and not including articles relative to the protection of homosexuals in the bill. Moreover, the PM reassured the religious leaders who disapproved of the bill that, "as long as he is in office, there's no way the parliament will expand civil unions to same-sex couples".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In September 2014, provisions on the criminalization of hate speech towards LGBT individuals were approved. The criminalization of LGBT-oriented hate speech led to the furious reaction of Metropolitan Seraphim who called the law "an oppression of the Greek Justice system" and "the cancellation of the freedom of speech" as imposed by "the nationalistic system and the New World Order instructors".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Several issues have been raised about the Greek media and their frequently discriminatory attitude towards LGBT individuals such as through the use of censorship, something partly attributed to the regulation authority, or Greek National Council for Radio and Television (NCRTV). Below is a list of some homophobic/transphobic incidents by the Greek media and other companies and bodies:


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The neo-Nazi far-right party Golden Dawn has made a very infamous statement when addressing gay men and women, saying that "after the immigrants, you're next". There are also allegations that members of the Greek police force were cooperating with Golden Dawn members and it may explain why several transgender women have been arrested during Thessaloniki Pride for no reason by the police, brutally attacked and illegally detained on the grounds of "keeping the city clean".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: Colour Youth, a non-governmental organisation, reported 101 incidents of homophobic and transphobic violence for 2009–2015, with 75 of them in 2015. Five of the attacks caused serious bodily harm, while the majority concerned verbal attacks.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A survey among Greek MPs, conducted in 2003 and presented by the Hellenic Homosexual Community (EOK), raised the issue of recognising taxation, inheritance and other legal rights to same-sex couples. The results of the survey showed that 41% of MPs surveyed favored granting such rights, while 55% were against it. Among PASOK MPs, 55% were favorable, compared to just 27% of New Democracy MPs. The party with the highest MP favorable responses was Synaspismos (67%), while the majority of Communist Party MPs abstained. MPs favorable responses were higher among women, younger and Athenian MPs.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A 2006 study among Greek students in Heraklion, Crete, surveyed their attitudes towards male homosexuality. Two scales were used and translated into Greek along with several questions that formed a self-completed questionnaire. The main findings showed that there were differences among the different schools in terms of homophobic expression and that "the main predictors influencing homophobia score were: willingness to defend and protect gay rights, conversations with gay individuals, religiosity, politicization and having gay friends".


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A Eurobarometer survey published in December 2006 showed that 15% of Greeks surveyed supported same-sex marriage and 11% recognised same-sex couple's right to adopt. These figures were considerably below the 25-member European Union average of 44% and 32% respectively, and placed Greece in the lowest ranks of the European Union along with Romania, Latvia, Poland, Cyprus, Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A Eurobarometer survey published in January 2007 ("Discrimination in the European Union") showed that 77% of Greeks believed that being gay or lesbian in their country "tends to be a disadvantage", while the European Union average was 55%. 68% of Greeks agreed that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was "widespread" in Greece (EU: 50%), and 37% that it was more widespread in than five years before (EU: 31%). 84% of Greeks also reported not having any gay or lesbian friends or acquaintances (EU: 65%).


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A Kapa Research (major Greek polling firm) survey on behalf of the Greek Institute of Psychological & Sexual Health, published in the Greek newspaper "Ta Nea" on 20 September 2010, showed that 64% of Greeks agreed with the legalization of same-sex partnerships and 24% disagreed; as for the legalization of same-sex marriage, 39% of Greeks agreed and 52% disagreed.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In June 2013, the Pew Research Center released data where they conducted surveys of respondents in some 40 countries on the question of whether the respondents believed their society should or should not accept homosexuality. Pew Research questioners scientifically asked respondents in Greece this question and found that amongst those asked, a majority 53% of those Greek respondents believed their society should accept homosexuality, while 40% of the respondents believed that society should not accept homosexuality. Amongst those Greeks surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29 years of age support for society accepting homosexuality was at a higher 66% than the overall 53%. For those respondents aged 30 to 49 support was too at a higher 62%, but a lower 40% for those respondents 50 years and older.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 11 April 2015, the newspaper "To Vima" published a survey conducted by Kapa Research, which showed that 39% of respondents supported same-sex marriage and 51% were against it. In the same survey, 66% of respondents agreed with the statement that homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 28% believed that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: On 12 May 2015, Greece had its first survey ever showing majority support for same-sex marriage at 56%, while 35% opposed it. The survey was based on 1,431 respondents and was conducted by Focus Bari. A very high percentage of respondents (76%) agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society and 70% agreed that civil partnerships should be extended to same-sex couples. However, respondents remained sceptical about adoption by same-sex couples with only 30% supporting it, while 56% opposed it. Only 14% believed that homosexuality is a mental disorder and 54% stated that stricter laws should exist to punish homophobic crimes (hate speech in particular).


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: In December 2015, a poll, conducted by the University of Macedonia during the week before the civil unions bill became law, found that 56% of the public agreed with the law, while 29% strongly opposed it.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A survey by Pew found that the Greek respondents (having been polled in 2015–2016) gave the most cultural liberal responses regarding LGBT rights among Orthodox Christians from various countries, except for respondents from the United States, and the most liberal responses of all Orthodox-majority countries. Specifically, 50% of practicing Greek Orthodox Christian respondents said that homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 45% disagreed. Regarding legalizing same-sex marriage, 25% of practicing Greek Orthodox Christians were in favor and 72% were opposed.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A poll conducted by DiaNeosis in 2018 showed that 40,8% of Greeks supported same-sex marriage and 24% were in favor of adoption by same-sex couples. The poll found a large age gap with 58% of those aged 17–24 and 47% of those aged 25–39 being supporters of same-sex marriage, in contrast to only 29% of those aged over 65. Adoption by same-sex couples was supported by 49% among those aged 17–24, but only 11% of those over 65 shared the same view.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: The 2019 Eurobarometer found that 39% of Greeks thought same-sex marriage should be allowed throughout Europe, 56% were against. The same poll found that 64% of respondents agreed with the statement: "Gay, lesbian and bisexual people should have the same rights as heterosexual people", whereas 32% disagreed. Those figures marked an increase of 6% and 2%, respectively, compared to the 2015 Eurobarometer survey.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A 2020 poll conducted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in cooperation with the KAPA Research, found that the concept of liberalism is becoming increasingly popular in Greece, with the majority of the Greeks viewing it positively. Also, 71% of the respondents believe that homosexuality should be accepted in the Greek society, and 90% of the respondents believe that the homosexual people should have equal rights as everyone else, marking a sharp increase compared to previous polls. Same-sex marriage is favoured by 56% of the respondents, while adoption by same-sex couples is supported by 40%.


title: LGBT rights in Greece

text: A 2022 poll conducted by the Eteron Institute, shows that the youth in Greece is increasingly liberal, with 70% of the young Greeks aged 17–24 being in favor of joint adoptions by same-sex couples while only 37% of the elder Greeks aged above 65 are in favor, marking is a sharp increase compared to the 2018 DiaNeosis poll where adoption by same-sex couples was supported by the 49% of those aged 17–24, but only 11% of those over 65.


title: T20 Blast

text: The T20 Blast, currently named the Vitality Blast for sponsorship reasons, is a professional Twenty20 cricket competition for English and Welsh first-class counties. The competition was established by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 as the first professional Twenty20 league in the world. It is the top-level Twenty20 competition in England and Wales.


title: T20 Blast

text: The competition has been known by a variety of names due to commercial sponsorship. It was known as the Twenty20 Cup from 2003 to 2009, the Friends Provident t20 and Friends Life t20 from 2010 to 2013, and the Natwest t20 Blast from 2014 to 2017. The competition has been sponsored by insurance company Vitality since 2018 and is known as the Vitality Blast.


title: T20 Blast

text: When the Benson & Hedges Cup ended in 2002, the ECB needed another one-day competition to fill its place. In response to dwindling crowds and reduced sponsorship the decision was made to launch a 20 over competition with the aim of boosting the game's popularity, particularly with the younger generation. The intention was to deliver fast-paced, exciting cricket which was accessible to fans who were put off by the longer versions of the game.


title: T20 Blast

text: The first Twenty20 Cup was held in 2003 and was marketed with the slogan "I don’t like cricket, I love it" – a line from the cricket-themed pop song Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc.


title: T20 Blast

text: The first official Twenty20 Cup matches were played on 13 June 2003. The first season of Twenty20 in England was a success, with the Surrey Lions defeating the Warwickshire Bears by nine wickets in the final to win the first Twenty20 Cup Final. On 15 July 2004 Middlesex versus Surrey (the first Twenty20 Cup game to be held at Lord's) attracted a crowd of 26,500, the largest attendance for any county cricket game other than a one-day final since 1953. The tournament saw six different winners in its seven years.


title: T20 Blast

text: By the end of the 2009, the ECB had decided to implement a larger competition for the T20 format of the game. The Twenty20 English Premier League was a proposed cricket league to be run by the ECB consisting of the 18 county teams and two overseas teams divided into two divisions with promotion and relegation. The proposal was influenced by the success of the Indian Premier League and by Allen Stanford who had organised the Stanford Super Series in the Caribbean. After the collapse of Stanford's series the proposals were scrapped. Instead a modified 40 over league, the Clydesdale Bank 40 was implemented.


title: T20 Blast

text: The Friends Provident T20 (renamed the FriendsLife T20 after just one season) was introduced in 2010. The competition initially divided the eighteen counties into North and South groups, before reverting to the previous model of three divisions of six teams. This period of Twenty20 cricket in England and Wales saw Leicestershire and Hampshire becoming the most successful sides, and in 2013 Northants won their first trophy for two decades.


title: T20 Blast

text: NatWest became the tournament sponsors in 2014, renewing a longstanding relationship the bank had with the county game. The first year of the tournament saw 700,000 spectators attend the games, the most in the competition's history. The tournament was won in 2014 by the Birmingham Bears, Warwickshire County Cricket Club's name for the purposes of Twenty20 cricket, making it the first time a county trophy had been won by a team using a city name. The final victors of this branding of the tournament in 2017 were Notts Outlaws.


title: T20 Blast

text: Vitality became the tournament sponsors in 2018 after signing a deal to become the title partner for four years.


title: T20 Blast

text: The 18 first-class counties compete for the title, initially playing in two or three geographical divisions, the number varying across the years. In 2018, matches were moved to be played in a block during July and August with the aim of attracting large crowds during the school summer holidays. In seasons with three divisions the top two teams in each division and the two best third place teams qualify for the playoff stage, in seasons with two divisions the top four teams in each division qualify for the playoff stage, with a set of quarter-finals leaving four teams in the competition.


title: T20 Blast

text: The two semi-finals and the final are played on one finals day at Edgbaston in September. In 2020, due to the delay in the start of the season because of the COVID-19 pandemic matches started on 27 August in a three division format, with the quarter finals played on 1 October and the semi-finals and finals on 4 October (postponed due to rain on the third).


title: İskenderun

text: İskenderun (), historically known as Alexandretta (, little Alexandria) and Scanderoon, is a city and district in Hatay Province on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.


title: İskenderun

text: The city was founded as Alexandria (Ἀλεξάνδρεια) to commemorate Alexander the Great’s victory over the Persian Darius III at Issus (Cilicia) in (333 BC). Starting in the Middle Ages, Western pilgrims used the diminutive Romance form Alexandretta.


title: İskenderun

text: İskenderun preserves the name, but probably not the exact site, of "Alexandria ad Issum". The settlement was founded by Alexander the Great in 333 BC to supersede Myriandus as the key to the Syrian Gates, about 37 km (23 miles) south of the scene of his victory at the Battle of Issus against the Persian King Darius III. Alexander camped in the highlands of İskenderun, around "Esentepe", and then ordered the city to be established and named "Alexandria". İskenderun is one of many cities founded on Alexander's orders, including Alexandria, Egypt. A memorial, a monument and a bronze statue for the victory raised at the city, and Herodian writes that they were there even at his time.


title: İskenderun

text: The importance of the place comes from its relation to the Syrian Gates, the easiest approach to the open ground of Hatay Province and Aleppo.


title: İskenderun

text: The bishopric of Alexandria Minor was a suffragan of Anazarbus, the capital and so also the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Roman province of Cilicia Secunda. Greek menologia speak of Saint Helenus, and the martyr saints Aristio and Theodore as early bishops of the See. But the first documented one is Hesychius, who took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and in a synod at Antioch in 341. Philomusus participated in the First Council of Constantinople in 381. Baranes is mentioned in connection with a synod at Antioch in 445. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Julianus was represented by his metropolitan, Cyrus of Anazarbus. Basilius was at the synod in Constantinople in 459 that condemned simoniacs. In 518, Paulus was deposed by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian for supporting the Jacobite Severus of Antioch.


title: İskenderun

text: No longer a residential diocese, Alexandria Minor is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see. In that list it was long named Cambysopolis, but the "Annuario Pontificio" now gives the correct ancient name.


title: İskenderun

text: There was fighting here under the Ottoman Empire: in 1606 the army of General Kuyucu Murat Pasha suppressed the Jelali revolts. The Ottomans continued to fortify the city, and the remains of the early 17th-century Ottoman castle walls can still be seen where the Güzün stream crosses the Varyant road. The city was well described in 1675 by the English naval chaplain Henry Teonge in his diary. The next army to cross the Belen Pass and attack Anatolia through here were the Egyptians of Muhammad Ali in 1832.


title: İskenderun

text: However, in the later Ottoman period the city developed as the main port on the Mediterranean for the overland trade from Baghdad and India, which had great importance until the establishment of the Egyptian overland route. Iskenderun served as a base, first for Genoese and Venetian merchants, then Western and Northern European merchants. The British Levant Company maintained an agency and factory here for 200 years, until 1825, in spite of high mortality among its employees because of regional disease, some due to lack of sanitation systems. During the 19th century the port grew, and the road to Aleppo was improved. The railway was built in 1912.


title: İskenderun

text: At the outset of World War I, when Britain was contemplating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, Lord Kitchener considered the conquest of Alexandretta to be essential in providing Britain with a port and railhead from which to access Iraq. He proposed a new railway be built to the east from Alexandretta, which would greatly reduce the time for reaching India from the UK. The De Bunsen Committee (8 April - 30 June 1915), a British inter-departmental group which was set up to discuss the issue in greater detail, preferred Haifa for this purpose.


title: İskenderun

text: Ultimately the British decided not to attack the Ottoman Empire via Alexandretta. On 8 February 1915 the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, protested to Britain's Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey about such an attack, citing a commitment that Britain made in 1912 that it had no designs on Syria. The German field marshal, Hindenburg, subsequently said that


title: İskenderun

text: Perhaps not the whole course of the war, but certainly the fate of our Ottoman Ally, could have been settled out of hand, if England had secured a decision in that region, or even seriously attempted it. Possession of the country south of the Tauras [mountains] would have been lost to Turkey at a blow if the English had succeeded in landing at Alexandretta.Armenians, who have maintained a cultural and economic presence in Iskenderun for centuries, most notably due to trade, were wiped out in the Hamidian Massacres, Adana Massacres, and the Armenian genocide, after centuries of discrimination.


title: İskenderun

text: Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, most of Hatay including İskenderun was occupied by French troops.


title: İskenderun

text: In July 1920 the San Remo conference did not assign Alexandretta sanjak to Turkey.<ref name="doi_10.1093/ia/iix118"></ref> Between 1921 and 1937, the city was part of the autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta within French-controlled Syria, under the League of Nations French Mandate of Syria and the Lebanon.


title: İskenderun

text: The Republic of Hatay was founded in 1938 and, in 1939, it joined the Republic of Turkey after a referendum. The referendum was, and still is, regarded as illegitimate, as the Turkish government moved supporters into the city and the Turkish Army "expelled most of the province's Alawite Arabs, Greek and Armenian majority" to decide the referendum result.


title: İskenderun

text: İskenderun is located on the eastern Mediterranean coast on the Gulf of İskenderun, at the foot of the Nur Mountains (Amanos Mountains).


title: İskenderun

text: İskenderun has hot, dry summers, and mild, moderately rainy winters ("Köppen: Csa," Trewartha": Cs"). At certain times of the year the town is swept by a strong wind called 'Yarıkkaya'. The countryside contains large areas of fruit groves. It is an important producer of oranges, tangerines and lemons, and even tropical fruits such as mangoes.


title: İskenderun

text: 19th-century traveler Martin Hartmann put the population of Iskenderun at roughly 500 households with no entry on ethnicity. Out of the 29 other settlements he listed in the Ottoman nahiyah of Iskenderun, 19 were Turkish (366 houses), 2 were Alawite (100 houses), 2 were Turkish-Alawite mixed (28 houses), and no information was listed for the remaining 6.


title: İskenderun

text: Distinctive İskenderun dishes include Künefe, a hot dessert with cheese. The main dishes include the Turkish staples such as döner and other kebabs served in the flat dürüm bread, lahmacun and also Antakya influenced cuisine including kibbeh, and sour pomegranate syrup used as a salad dressing. İskenderun in particular offers good quality fish and prawns.


title: İskenderun

text: The city has two association football clubs. One of them is Körfez İskenderunspor. The more successful İskenderunspor folded in 2006, although a phoenix club İskenderunspor 1967 was then founded in 2009.


title: İskenderun

text: İskenderun is featured in the film "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" as an important starting point for the Grail map. The State of Hatay is depicted as being ruled by a Sultan, although it was technically a transitional republic.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: The Butterfly Effect 2 is a 2006 American science fiction psychological thriller film directed by John R. Leonetti and starring Eric Lively, Erica Durance, Dustin Milligan and Gina Holden. The film is largely unrelated to the 2004 film "The Butterfly Effect" and was released direct-to-video on October 10, 2006. It is followed by "" (2009).


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: The film received generally negative reviews, with reviewers criticizing its formulaic copy of the first film, simply with different characters.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: Nick and his girlfriend, Julie, are celebrating Julie's 24th birthday with their friends Trevor and Amanda. Nick and Julie start to discuss their future when Nick is urgently called into work. He has to go to the meeting because he is up against co-worker Dave Bristol for a promotion. As the four friends drive back to the city, their vehicle collides with a semi-truck. Of the four friends, only Nick survives. Later, when looking at a photograph of himself and Julie, everything in the room begins to shudder and shake, while the people in the photograph begin moving.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: One year later, while presenting an important sales pitch to investors, Nick suffers a blinding headache and outrageous nosebleed. As a result, he is given a week's suspension. Back home, Nick looks through photographs from Julie's birthday and somehow manages to transport himself back to the moment just before the fatal collision. This time, he knows how to avoid the accident, and he awakens in a new timeline where Julie is living happily with him. However, in this reality, Nick's life is ruined when he is fired for backing up his friend and colleague Trevor.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: Later, Nick sees a Christmas photograph of him, his friends and colleagues, and realizes that this was the point at which a crucial deal was made, resulting in Dave's promotion. Nick decides to try to alter this in his favor, so he concentrates on the photo in order to trigger another episode. Sure enough, he finds himself back at the party.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: After deliberately spilling a drink on Dave to distract him, he finds the paperwork for the crucial deal. Nick then returns to the present in a new version of reality. In this reality, Nick is the vice-president of the company, but he and Julie have split up and he is living the bachelor lifestyle. Also, Trevor and Nick end up on the wrong side of a shady investor; the company is broken due to failed deals, and the investor, infuriated by a lack of results, kills Trevor, who borrowed money from him. In the course of trying to escape a similar fate, Nick runs into Julie just as one of the investor's armed henchmen tries to shoot him but shoots her instead. Nick is rendered unconscious before he can go back in time once again. He awakes in the bedroom of the investor's business partner, but he manages to kill him and escape. Nick confesses everything to his mother, who tells him that he cannot "control everything". She says his father also tried to control things (implying in the process that his father had the same ability previous to Nick) but ultimately committed suicide.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: Nick transports himself to the scene from the start of the movie, hoping to finally fix everything by breaking up with Julie. However, he did not plan on how upset she would be – and she confesses to being pregnant and speeds away in his car. Fearing a similar accident as the original, Nick speeds after her, but while avoiding an oncoming car he opts to save Julie rather than himself by driving off the road and over a cliff.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: One year later, Julie lives in New York City with her son, Nick Jr., who seems to have the same affliction as his father.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: In a series of flickering flashbacks that run during the end credits, an unidentified man (who is presumably Nick's own father) is shown grappling with mental illness – presumably brought on by the progressive brain damage that the time-traveling causes to its user with each use – and eventually committing suicide. In the last of the flickering images, Nick himself is shown recovering in a hospital bed from serious injuries, but whether this is him recovering from his initial accident shown at the beginning of the movie, or him recovering from his successful effort to save Julie, remains a mystery.


title: The Butterfly Effect 2

text: "The Butterfly Effect 2" was met with negative reviews. Reviewers claim that the sequel adds nothing to the message of the first movie, covering exactly the same ground with different characters. With a limited temporal scope, the story of this movie isn't as intertwined as the first. Also, the less-impressive special effects and very short filming time combine to give the movie a much less impressive feel than the original. It received a negative reception from Reel Film Reviews, which called it "An abominable, pointless sequel."


title: Obvious Child

text: Obvious Child is a 2014 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Gillian Robespierre (in her directorial debut) and stars Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann and David Cross. The story follows Donna, a stand-up comedian, who has a drunken one-night stand with a man named Max after breaking up with her boyfriend. She subsequently finds out she is pregnant and decides to have an abortion.


title: Obvious Child

text: "Obvious Child" originated as a 2009 short film which was written by Robespierre, Anna Bean and Karen Maine, and also starred Slate in the main role. By making the film, Robespierre hoped to remove the stigma surrounding abortion and to correct what she perceived as a misrepresentation of unplanned pregnancy in earlier films. She finished the feature-length script in 2012.


title: Obvious Child

text: The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2014, and was released in theaters on June 6, 2014. It grossed $3.3 million and was well received by critics. David Edelstein, Mick LaSalle and Dana Stevens praised the film's portrayal of abortion, while A. O. Scott and Ty Burr highlighted its realism and humor. The film won numerous accolades, including two awards from the National Board of Review and two Independent Spirit Award nominations.


title: Obvious Child

text: After performing a set at her regular comedy club, Donna Stern is dumped in the bathroom by her boyfriend, Ryan, who confesses he is leaving her for one of her friends. Donna tailspins into a wave of depression and later drunkenly delivers a terrible set in which she insults her ex-boyfriend. Later that night, at the bar, she meets Max, who is there with clients but who missed her set. Donna and Max have an instant connection and they end up having sex. In the morning Donna leaves Max's apartment without saying goodbye.


title: Obvious Child

text: Several weeks after their one-night stand, Donna discovers that her breasts are sore while trying on clothes and suspects she is pregnant. A home pregnancy test later confirms this. Donna visits a Planned Parenthood clinic to schedule an abortion and discovers the only dates available are her mother's birthday and Valentine's Day; she picks Valentine's Day.


title: Obvious Child

text: Max tracks Donna down at the bookstore where she works and they have the first of several awkward conversations. Donna then runs into Max when he stops by her mother's apartment to return a book to her mother, Nancy, who is a former professor of his. They have dinner together where Donna is prepared to tell Max about her pregnancy and impending abortion, but cannot bring herself to tell him after he makes a comment about how he wants to be a grandfather someday. He comes to Donna's comedy show, but her set is canceled and she leaves with another man, Sam. She has an awkward evening with Sam and quickly leaves. After her terrible night, Donna visits her mother to talk about her upcoming abortion. Her mother comforts her by telling her that she too had an abortion before Donna was conceived.


title: Obvious Child

text: Donna regrets pushing Max away and leaves him several unreturned voicemails apologizing and saying she really does need to talk to him. As a final effort, she invites him to the club to see her perform. Max arrives just as she goes on stage to perform a set about how she is pregnant and will have an abortion the next day. Max leaves, but on the day of Donna's abortion, he arrives at her home with flowers and asks if he can accompany her to her procedure. While at the clinic he tells her he supports her, and that when he said that he wanted to be a grandfather, he didn’t mean tomorrow but sometime far in the future. After the abortion, Max takes Donna to his home where he makes her tea, and then they watch "Gone with the Wind" together.


title: Obvious Child

text: "Obvious Child" originated as a short film of the same name about an unemployed woman who decides to terminate her pregnancy resulting from a one-night stand, which was written by Gillian Robespierre, Anna Bean and Karen Maine. Robespierre said that the story was spawned from her frustration with what she perceived as a "misrepresentation of women on screen when it came to unplanned pregnancy", in films such as "Juno" (2007), "Knocked Up" (2007) and "Waitress" (2007). Robespierre, Bean and Maine, feeling "disenchanted with the representation of young women's experience with becoming pregnant", wanted to make a film that destigmatized an abortion by featuring a woman who terminates a pregnancy without regretting her decision. Jenny Slate was cast as the lead after Robespierre and Bean saw Slate performing stand-up comedy. The short was produced in 2009 and released on the video-sharing website Vimeo, where it was watched by 40,000 people.


title: Obvious Child

text: Inspired by the responses to the short film, Robespierre decided to expand the story into a feature film, and wrote an extended screenplay with Karen Maine and Elisabeth Holm. Although the writers wanted to "stick as close ... as possible" to the original story and characters, they changed the lead character's profession to stand-up comedy. The film's stand-up scenes were written by Robespierre, who tried to emulate Jenny Slate's style of comedy, and were revised by Slate and Gabe Liedman, another comedian, who also volunteered their own material. The script was written over an 18-month period before Robespierre and Holm began to seek financiers to fund the film's production; they started sending the script to potential financiers in November 2012. It was financed through a variety of sources, including the production companies Animal Kingdom Films, Rooks Nest Entertainment, Sundial Pictures and Votiv Films, as well as grants from Rooftop Films, the Tribeca Film Institute and the San Francisco Film Society.


title: Obvious Child

text: The film was shot by cinematographer Chris Teague over 18 days in New York during April 2013. The filmmakers were given permission by Planned Parenthood to film for a day in the organization's New Rochelle clinic. The film was edited by Casey Brooks in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the score was written by Robespierre's boyfriend.


title: Obvious Child

text: "Obvious Child" premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2014. A Kickstarter campaign to help send the film to Sundance was created by the director on December 13, 2013, earning a total of $37,214 by January 14, 2014. Independent film distributor A24 bought the film's North American distribution rights, while international distribution rights were purchased by The Exchange. It was released in the United States on June 6, 2014, and earned $3,123,963 at the box office in 18 weeks. It also earned $197,361 and $4,093 in the United Kingdom and New Zealand respectively, making a total gross of $3,325,417.


title: Obvious Child

text: Posters for the film advertised it as an "abortion comedy". Gillian Robespierre said that she found the descriptor reductive, but also said that she was pleased that the word "abortion" was being used on the film's poster and in headlines about the film. Writing for "Entertainment Weekly", Emily Blake speculated that the film's lack of recognition in mainstream award circles may have been due to its label as "the abortion comedy". NBC drew criticism for requesting that the word "abortion" be removed from an online advertisement for the film; it apologized after a petition circulated by Planned Parenthood accused the network of censorship. The film was marketed in conjunction with the abortion-rights organization NARAL Pro-Choice America.


title: Obvious Child

text: The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on October 7, 2014. Extra features include an audio commentary with Robespierre, Elisabeth Holm and Jenny Slate, a featurette about the film's production, a collection of extended scenes, and the original 2009 "Obvious Child" short film on which the feature was based.


title: Obvious Child

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 90% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The critical consensus from the website states, "Tackling a sensitive subject with maturity, honesty, and wit, "Obvious Child" serves as a deeply promising debut for writer-director Gillian Robespierre." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Obvious Child

text: Peter Travers described "Obvious Child" as "uniquely special" in "Rolling Stone", while "The Washington Post" Ann Hornaday described it as "one of the most startlingly honest romantic comedies to appear onscreen in years". Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" found the characters sympathetic and realistic, and enjoyed the humor. "The New York Times" chief critic A. O. Scott praised the film for striking a balance between humor and sentimentality, writing, "It's both funny and serious without trying too hard to be either, and by trying above all to be honest." Peter Debruge described Jenny Slate as "wildly funny" in "Variety", while Marc Mohan called her performance "endearing and real" in "The Oregonian". "The Hollywood Reporter" Todd McCarthy was also impressed by Slate's performance and opined that the supporting cast members were equally impressive.


title: Obvious Child

text: Numerous critics praised "Obvious Child" for its portrayal of abortion, including Dana Stevens of "Slate", who wrote that the way Donna's abortion was portrayed was humane and politically neutral but also that the film, "for all its lightness of tone, is radical". In a review for "The Guardian", Xan Brooks described the film as "fresh and funny and really rather brave" for handling a controversial topic that other filmmakers routinely avoid. "New York" critic David Edelstein called Robespierre "brave enough to be ambivalent" in choosing not to include a blatant political message in the film. The "San Francisco Chronicle" Mick LaSalle similarly concluded that "If the movie has a political statement, it's a subtle one"; he also praised the film for treating the topic sincerely while still maintaining a humorous tone.


title: Obvious Child

text: Conversely, Michelle Golberg suggested in a review for "The Nation" that the film's popularity with critics was not due to its quality but rather its taboo subject matter: "If the ordinary drama of abortion were more regularly represented in the movies, "Obvious Child" wouldn't be much more than an amusing hipster diversion." Kate Taylor of "The Globe and Mail" expressed a similar sentiment and opined that many of the film's jokes were crude and lacking in humor. "USA Today" Scott Bowles also found "Obvious Child" unfunny, describing the characters as "so morbid and whiny that the jokes don't work, even as irony". Kyle Smith, a critic for the "New York Post", found the plot uninteresting and the cinematography "ugly", and criticized Slate's "desperate" performance.


title: Obvious Child

text: The film was criticized by a variety of conservative and anti-abortion groups and publications, including the Family Research Council, The Heritage Foundation, and the Media Research Center, through its NewsBusters blog and Cybercast News Service. In an article for "The Human Life Review", Mary Rose Somarriba dismissed the film as "obvious propaganda". Katelyn Beaty, meanwhile, who reviewed "Obvious Child" for "Christianity Today", wrote: "While I ultimately disagree with Robespierre's political aims, at the least she has provided a sometimes funny, often tender portrait of many (though not all) women who face an unplanned pregnancy."


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: Sunderlal Bahuguna Ji (9 January 1927 – 21 May 2021) was an Indian environmentalist and Chipko movement leader. The idea of the Chipko movement was suggested by his wife and him. He fought for the preservation of forests in the Himalayas, first as a member of the Chipko movement in the 1970s, and later spearheaded the anti-Tehri Dam movement from the 1980s to early 2004. He was one of the early environmentalists of India, and later he and others associated with the Chipko movement and started taking up wider environmental issues, such as being opposed to large dams.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: Sunderlal Bahuguna was born in the village Maroda near Tehri, Uttarakhand, on 9 January 1927 and died on 21 May 2021 in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand due to COVID-19. Early on, he fought against untouchability and later started organising hill women in his anti-liquor drive from 1965 to 1970. He started social activities at the age of 13, under the guidance of Shri Dev Suman, who was a nationalist spreading a message of non-violence, and he was with the Congress Party of Uttar Pradesh at the time of Independence. Bahuguna also mobilised people against colonial rule before 1947. He adopted Gandhian principles in his life and married his wife Vimla with the condition that they would live among rural people and establish ashram in village. Inspired by Gandhi, he walked through Himalayan forests and hills, covering more than 4,700 kilometres on foot and observed the damage done by mega developmental projects on the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayas and subsequent degradation of social life in villages.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: The Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in Uttarakhand (then a part of Uttar Pradesh) from spontaneous action by villagers to save trees from being cut down by forest contractors. In Hindi, "chipko" literally means "hug", and the movement got this name since people trying to save trees started hugging and Loving onto trees when lumbermen tried to fall those. One of Sunderlal Bahuguna's notable contributions to the Chipko movement, and to environmentalism in general, was his creation of the Chipko's slogan "Ecology is permanent economy". Sunderlal Bahuguna helped bring the movement to prominence through a 5,000-kilometer trans-Himalaya march undertaken from 1981 to 1983, traveling from village to village, gathering support for the movement. He had an appointment with the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and that meeting is credited with resulting in Gandhi's subsequent 15-year ban on cutting of green trees in 1980. He was also closely associated with Gaura Devi, one of the pioneers of the movement.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: Bahuguna played a major role in the anti-Tehri Dam protests for decades. He used Satyagraha methods and repeatedly went on hunger strikes at the banks of Bhagirathi as a mark of his protest. In 1995, he called off a 45-day-long fast following an assurance from the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao of the appointment of a review committee on the ecological impacts of the dam. Thereafter he went on another long fast which lasted for 74 days at Gandhi Samadhi, Raj Ghat, during the tenure of Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, who gave personal undertaking of project review. However, despite a court case which ran in the Supreme Court for over a decade, work resumed at the Tehri Dam in 2001, after which he was arrested on 24 April 2001.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: Eventually, the dam reservoir started filling up in 2004, and on 31 July 2004, he was finally evacuated to new accommodation at Koti. Later he shifted to the capital city of Uttarakhand, Dehradun, and began living there with his wife.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: On September 8, 1983, Pandurang Hegde, an environmental activist from Karnataka, started the Appiko (Kannada for Chipko, "to hug") movement to protest against the felling of trees, monoculture, and deforestation in the Western Ghats, deriving inspiration from Sunderlal Bahugana and the Chipko movement. Bahuguna had visited the region in 1979 to help in the campaign against the proposed Bedthi hydroelectric project. After the Appiko movement started, Bahuguna and Pandurang Hegde walked across many parts of south India promoting conservation of ecology, especially the protection of the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. This and the broader Save the Western Ghats Movement led to a moratorium on green felling across the region in 1989.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: While best known as an environmental activist and as a passionate defender of the Himalayan people and India's rivers, Bahuguna also worked to improve the plight of the hill people, especially working women, and was associated with temperance movements and earlier on with struggles against casteist discrimination.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: Bahuguna died on May 21, 2021, due to COVID-19 complications. Shortly after, he was commemorated by Amul in one of its advertisements.


title: Sunderlal Bahuguna

text: On May 21st, 2022, Bahuguna's daughter, Madhu Pathak edited and published a souvenir book on his life and work. This book has contributions from reputed social activists, writers, intellectuals and politicians. In addition to Bahuguna's life and work, this book also helps the reader in understanding ecological mass-movements in Garhwal Himalayan region.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is a type of genetic recombination in which genetic information is exchanged between two similar or identical molecules of double-stranded or single-stranded nucleic acids (usually DNA as in cellular organisms but may be also RNA in viruses).


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is widely used by cells to accurately DNA repair harmful breaks that occur on both strands of DNA, known as double-strand breaks (DSB), in a process called homologous recombinational repair (HRR).


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination also produces new combinations of DNA sequences during meiosis, the process by which eukaryotes make gamete cells, like sperm and egg cells in animals. These new combinations of DNA represent genetic variation in offspring, which in turn enables populations to adapt during the course of evolution.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is also used in horizontal gene transfer to exchange genetic material between different strains and species of bacteria and viruses. Horizontal gene transfer is the primary mechanism for the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Although homologous recombination varies widely among different organisms and cell types, for double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) most forms involve the same basic steps. After a double-strand break occurs, sections of DNA around the 5' ends of the break are cut away in a process called "resection". In the "strand invasion" step that follows, an overhanging 3' end of the broken DNA molecule then "invades" a similar or identical DNA molecule that is not broken. After strand invasion, the further sequence of events may follow either of two main pathways discussed below (see Models); the DSBR (double-strand break repair) pathway or the SDSA (synthesis-dependent strand annealing) pathway. Homologous recombination that occurs during DNA repair tends to result in non-crossover products, in effect restoring the damaged DNA molecule as it existed before the double-strand break.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is conserved across all three domains of life as well as DNA and RNA viruses, suggesting that it is a nearly universal biological mechanism. The discovery of genes for homologous recombination in protists—a diverse group of eukaryotic microorganisms—has been interpreted as evidence that meiosis emerged early in the evolution of eukaryotes. Since their dysfunction has been strongly associated with increased susceptibility to several types of cancer, the proteins that facilitate homologous recombination are topics of active research. Homologous recombination is also used in gene targeting, a technique for introducing genetic changes into target organisms. For their development of this technique, Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies were awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine; Capecchi and Smithies independently discovered applications to mouse embryonic stem cells, however the highly conserved mechanisms underlying the DSB repair model, including uniform homologous integration of transformed DNA (gene therapy), were first shown in plasmid experiments by Orr-Weaver, Szostack and Rothstein. Researching the plasmid-induced DSB, using γ-irradiation in the 1970s-1980s, led to later experiments using endonucleases (e.g. I-SceI) to cut chromosomes for genetic engineering of mammalian cells, where nonhomologous recombination is more frequent than in yeast.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In the early 1900s, William Bateson and Reginald Punnett found an exception to one of the principles of inheritance originally described by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s. In contrast to Mendel's notion that traits are independently assorted when passed from parent to child—for example that a cat's hair color and its tail length are inherited independent of each other—Bateson and Punnett showed that certain genes associated with physical traits can be inherited together, or genetically linked. In 1911, after observing that linked traits could on occasion be inherited separately, Thomas Hunt Morgan suggested that "crossovers" can occur between linked genes, where one of the linked genes physically crosses over to a different chromosome. Two decades later, Barbara McClintock and Harriet Creighton demonstrated that chromosomal crossover occurs during meiosis, the process of cell division by which sperm and egg cells are made. Within the same year as McClintock's discovery, Curt Stern showed that crossing over—later called "recombination"—could also occur in somatic cells like white blood cells and skin cells that divide through mitosis.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In 1947, the microbiologist Joshua Lederberg showed that bacteria—which had been assumed to reproduce only asexually through binary fission—are capable of genetic recombination, which is more similar to sexual reproduction. This work established "E. coli" as a model organism in genetics, and helped Lederberg win the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Building on studies in fungi, in 1964 Robin Holliday proposed a model for recombination in meiosis which introduced key details of how the process can work, including the exchange of material between chromosomes through Holliday junctions. In 1983, Jack Szostak and colleagues presented a model now known as the DSBR pathway, which accounted for observations not explained by the Holliday model. During the next decade, experiments in "Drosophila", budding yeast and mammalian cells led to the emergence of other models of homologous recombination, called SDSA pathways, which do not always rely on Holliday junctions.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Much of the later work identifying proteins involved in the process and determining their mechanisms has been performed by a number of individuals including James Haber, Patrick Sung, Stephen Kowalczykowski, and others.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination (HR) is essential to cell division in eukaryotes like plants, animals, fungi and protists. In cells that divide through mitosis, homologous recombination repairs double-strand breaks in DNA caused by ionizing radiation or DNA-damaging chemicals. Left unrepaired, these double-strand breaks can cause large-scale rearrangement of chromosomes in somatic cells, which can in turn lead to cancer.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In addition to repairing DNA, homologous recombination also helps produce genetic diversity when cells divide in meiosis to become specialized gamete cells—sperm or egg cells in animals, pollen or ovules in plants, and spores in fungi. It does so by facilitating chromosomal crossover, in which regions of similar but not identical DNA are exchanged between homologous chromosomes. This creates new, possibly beneficial combinations of genes, which can give offspring an evolutionary advantage. Chromosomal crossover often begins when a protein called Spo11 makes a targeted double-strand break in DNA. These sites are non-randomly located on the chromosomes; usually in intergenic promoter regions and preferentially in GC-rich domains These double-strand break sites often occur at recombination hotspots, regions in chromosomes that are about 1,000–2,000 base pairs in length and have high rates of recombination. The absence of a recombination hotspot between two genes on the same chromosome often means that those genes will be inherited by future generations in equal proportion. This represents linkage between the two genes greater than would be expected from genes that independently assort during meiosis.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Double-strand breaks can be repaired through homologous recombination, polymerase theta-mediated end joining (TMEJ) or through non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). NHEJ is a DNA repair mechanism which, unlike homologous recombination, does not require a long homologous sequence to guide repair. Whether homologous recombination or NHEJ is used to repair double-strand breaks is largely determined by the phase of cell cycle. Homologous recombination repairs DNA before the cell enters mitosis (M phase). It occurs during and shortly after DNA replication, in the S and G phases of the cell cycle, when sister chromatids are more easily available. Compared to homologous chromosomes, which are similar to another chromosome but often have different alleles, sister chromatids are an ideal template for homologous recombination because they are an identical copy of a given chromosome. When no homologous template is available or when the template cannot be accessed due to a defect in homologous recombination, the break is repaired via TMEJ in the S and G phases of the cell cycle. In contrast to homologous recombination and TMEJ, NHEJ is predominant in the G phase of the cell cycle, when the cell is growing but not yet ready to divide. It occurs less frequently after the G phase, but maintains at least some activity throughout the cell cycle. The mechanisms that regulate homologous recombination and NHEJ throughout the cell cycle vary widely between species.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), which modify the activity of other proteins by adding phosphate groups to (that is, phosphorylating) them, are important regulators of homologous recombination in eukaryotes. When DNA replication begins in budding yeast, the cyclin-dependent kinase Cdc28 begins homologous recombination by phosphorylating the Sae2 protein. After being so activated by the addition of a phosphate, Sae2 causes a clean cut to be made near a double-strand break in DNA. It is unclear if the endonuclease responsible for this cut is Sae2 itself or another protein, Mre11. This allows a protein complex including Mre11, known as the MRX complex, to bind to DNA, and begins a series of protein-driven reactions that exchange material between two DNA molecules.


title: Homologous recombination

text: The packaging of eukaryotic DNA into chromatin presents a barrier to all DNA-based processes that require recruitment of enzymes to their sites of action. To allow homologous recombination (HR) DNA repair, the chromatin must be remodeled. In eukaryotes, ATP dependent chromatin remodeling complexes and histone-modifying enzymes are two predominant factors employed to accomplish this remodeling process.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Chromatin relaxation occurs rapidly at the site of a DNA damage. In one of the earliest steps, the stress-activated protein kinase, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), phosphorylates SIRT6 on serine 10 in response to double-strand breaks or other DNA damage. This post-translational modification facilitates the mobilization of SIRT6 to DNA damage sites, and is required for efficient recruitment of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) to DNA break sites and for efficient repair of DSBs. PARP1 protein starts to appear at DNA damage sites in less than a second, with half maximum accumulation within 1.6 seconds after the damage occurs. Next the chromatin remodeler Alc1 quickly attaches to the product of PARP1 action, a poly-ADP ribose chain, and Alc1 completes arrival at the DNA damage within 10 seconds of the occurrence of the damage. About half of the maximum chromatin relaxation, presumably due to action of Alc1, occurs by 10 seconds. This then allows recruitment of the DNA repair enzyme MRE11, to initiate DNA repair, within 13 seconds.


title: Homologous recombination

text: γH2AX, the phosphorylated form of H2AX is also involved in the early steps leading to chromatin decondensation after DNA double-strand breaks. The histone variant H2AX constitutes about 10% of the H2A histones in human chromatin. γH2AX (H2AX phosphorylated on serine 139) can be detected as soon as 20 seconds after irradiation of cells (with DNA double-strand break formation), and half maximum accumulation of γH2AX occurs in one minute. The extent of chromatin with phosphorylated γH2AX is about two million base pairs at the site of a DNA double-strand break. γH2AX does not, itself, cause chromatin decondensation, but within 30 seconds of irradiation, RNF8 protein can be detected in association with γH2AX. RNF8 mediates extensive chromatin decondensation, through its subsequent interaction with CHD4, a component of the nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase complex NuRD.


title: Homologous recombination

text: After undergoing relaxation subsequent to DNA damage, followed by DNA repair, chromatin recovers to a compaction state close to its pre-damage level after about 20 min.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In vertebrates the locations at which recombination occurs are determined by the binding locations of PRDM9, a protein which recognizes a specific sequence motif by its zinc finger array. At these sites, another protein, SPO11 catalyses recombination-initiating double strand breaks (DSBs), a subset of which are repaired by recombination with the homologous chromosome. PRDM9 deposits both H3K4me3 and H3K36me3 histone methylation marks at the sites it binds, and this methyltransferase activity is essential for its role in DSB positioning. Following their formation, DSB sites are processed by resection, resulting in single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) that becomes decorated with DMC1. From mid-zygotene to early pachytene, as part of the recombinational repair process, DMC1 dissociates from the ssDNA and counts decrease until all breaks (except those on the XY chromosomes) are repaired at late pachytene. Several other proteins are involved in this process, including ZCWPW1, the first protein directly positioned by PRDM9's dual histone marks. ZCWPW1 is important for homologous DSB repair, not positioning.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Two primary models for how homologous recombination repairs double-strand breaks in DNA are the double-strand break repair (DSBR) pathway (sometimes called the "double Holliday junction model") and the synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) pathway. The two pathways are similar in their first several steps. After a double-strand break occurs, the MRX complex (MRN complex in humans) binds to DNA on either side of the break. Next a resection takes place, in which DNA around the 5' ends of the break is cut back. This happens in two distinct steps: first the MRX complex recruits the Sae2 protein, and these two proteins trim back the 5' ends on either side of the break to create short 3' overhangs of single-strand DNA; in the second step, 5'→3' resection is continued by the Sgs1 helicase and the Exo1 and Dna2 nucleases. As a helicase, Sgs1 "unzips" the double-strand DNA, while the nuclease activity of Exo1 and Dna2 allows them to cut the single-stranded DNA produced by Sgs1.


title: Homologous recombination

text: The RPA protein, which has high affinity for single-stranded DNA, then binds the 3' overhangs. With the help of several other proteins that mediate the process, the Rad51 protein (and Dmc1, in meiosis) then forms a filament of nucleic acid and protein on the single strand of DNA coated with RPA. This nucleoprotein filament then begins searching for DNA sequences similar to that of the 3' overhang. After finding such a sequence, the single-stranded nucleoprotein filament moves into (invades) the similar or identical recipient DNA duplex in a process called strand invasion. In cells that divide through mitosis, the recipient DNA duplex is generally a sister chromatid, which is identical to the damaged DNA molecule and provides a template for repair. In meiosis, however, the recipient DNA tends to be from a similar but not necessarily identical homologous chromosome. A displacement loop (D-loop) is formed during strand invasion between the invading 3' overhang strand and the homologous chromosome. After strand invasion, a DNA polymerase extends the end of the invading 3' strand by synthesizing new DNA. This changes the D-loop to a cross-shaped structure known as a Holliday junction. Following this, more DNA synthesis occurs on the invading strand (i.e., one of the original 3' overhangs), effectively restoring the strand on the homologous chromosome that was displaced during strand invasion.


title: Homologous recombination

text: After the stages of resection, strand invasion and DNA synthesis, the DSBR and SDSA pathways become distinct. The DSBR pathway is unique in that the second 3' overhang (which was not involved in strand invasion) also forms a Holliday junction with the homologous chromosome. The double Holliday junctions are then converted into recombination products by nicking endonucleases, a type of restriction endonuclease which cuts only one DNA strand. The DSBR pathway commonly results in crossover, though it can sometimes result in non-crossover products; the ability of a broken DNA molecule to collect sequences from separated donor loci was shown in mitotic budding yeast using plasmids or endonuclease induction of chromosomal events. Because of this tendency for chromosomal crossover, the DSBR pathway is a likely model of how crossover homologous recombination occurs during meiosis.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Whether recombination in the DSBR pathway results in chromosomal crossover is determined by how the double Holliday junction is cut, or "resolved". Chromosomal crossover will occur if one Holliday junction is cut on the crossing strand and the other Holliday junction is cut on the non-crossing strand (in Figure 5, along the horizontal purple arrowheads at one Holliday junction and along the vertical orange arrowheads at the other). Alternatively, if the two Holliday junctions are cut on the crossing strands (along the horizontal purple arrowheads at both Holliday junctions in Figure 5), then chromosomes without crossover will be produced.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination via the SDSA pathway occurs in cells that divide through mitosis and meiosis and results in non-crossover products. In this model, the invading 3' strand is extended along the recipient DNA duplex by a DNA polymerase, and is released as the Holliday junction between the donor and recipient DNA molecules slides in a process called "branch migration". The newly synthesized 3' end of the invading strand is then able to anneal to the other 3' overhang in the damaged chromosome through complementary base pairing. After the strands anneal, a small flap of DNA can sometimes remain. Any such flaps are removed, and the SDSA pathway finishes with the resealing, also known as "ligation", of any remaining single-stranded gaps.


title: Homologous recombination

text: During mitosis, the major homologous recombination pathway for repairing DNA double-strand breaks appears to be the SDSA pathway (rather than the DSBR pathway). The SDSA pathway produces non-crossover recombinants (Figure 5). During meiosis non-crossover recombinants also occur frequently and these appear to arise mainly by the SDSA pathway as well. Non-crossover recombination events occurring during meiosis likely reflect instances of repair of DNA double-strand damages or other types of DNA damages.


title: Homologous recombination

text: The single-strand annealing (SSA) pathway of homologous recombination repairs double-strand breaks between two repeat sequences. The SSA pathway is unique in that it does not require a separate similar or identical molecule of DNA, like the DSBR or SDSA pathways of homologous recombination. Instead, the SSA pathway only requires a single DNA duplex, and uses the repeat sequences as the identical sequences that homologous recombination needs for repair. The pathway is relatively simple in concept: after two strands of the same DNA duplex are cut back around the site of the double-strand break, the two resulting 3' overhangs then align and anneal to each other, restoring the DNA as a continuous duplex.


title: Homologous recombination

text: As DNA around the double-strand break is cut back, the single-stranded 3' overhangs being produced are coated with the RPA protein, which prevents the 3' overhangs from sticking to themselves. A protein called Rad52 then binds each of the repeat sequences on either side of the break, and aligns them to enable the two complementary repeat sequences to anneal. After annealing is complete, leftover non-homologous flaps of the 3' overhangs are cut away by a set of nucleases, known as Rad1/Rad10, which are brought to the flaps by the Saw1 and Slx4 proteins. New DNA synthesis fills in any gaps, and ligation restores the DNA duplex as two continuous strands. The DNA sequence between the repeats is always lost, as is one of the two repeats. The SSA pathway is considered mutagenic since it results in such deletions of genetic material.


title: Homologous recombination

text: During DNA replication, double-strand breaks can sometimes be encountered at replication forks as DNA helicase unzips the template strand. These defects are repaired in the "break-induced replication" (BIR) pathway of homologous recombination. The precise molecular mechanisms of the BIR pathway remain unclear. Three proposed mechanisms have strand invasion as an initial step, but they differ in how they model the migration of the D-loop and later phases of recombination.


title: Homologous recombination

text: The BIR pathway can also help to maintain the length of telomeres (regions of DNA at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes) in the absence of (or in cooperation with) telomerase. Without working copies of the enzyme telomerase, telomeres typically shorten with each cycle of mitosis, which eventually blocks cell division and leads to senescence. In budding yeast cells where telomerase has been inactivated through mutations, two types of "survivor" cells have been observed to avoid senescence longer than expected by elongating their telomeres through BIR pathways.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Maintaining telomere length is critical for cell immortalization, a key feature of cancer. Most cancers maintain telomeres by upregulating telomerase. However, in several types of human cancer, a BIR-like pathway helps to sustain some tumors by acting as an alternative mechanism of telomere maintenance. This fact has led scientists to investigate whether such recombination-based mechanisms of telomere maintenance could thwart anti-cancer drugs like telomerase inhibitors.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is a major DNA repair process in bacteria. It is also important for producing genetic diversity in bacterial populations, although the process differs substantially from meiotic recombination, which repairs DNA damages and brings about diversity in eukaryotic genomes. Homologous recombination has been most studied and is best understood for "Escherichia coli". Double-strand DNA breaks in bacteria are repaired by the RecBCD pathway of homologous recombination. Breaks that occur on only one of the two DNA strands, known as single-strand gaps, are thought to be repaired by the RecF pathway. Both the RecBCD and RecF pathways include a series of reactions known as "branch migration", in which single DNA strands are exchanged between two intercrossed molecules of duplex DNA, and "resolution", in which those two intercrossed molecules of DNA are cut apart and restored to their normal double-stranded state.


title: Homologous recombination

text: The RecBCD pathway is the main recombination pathway used in many bacteria to repair double-strand breaks in DNA, and the proteins are found in a broad array of bacteria. These double-strand breaks can be caused by UV light and other radiation, as well as chemical mutagens. Double-strand breaks may also arise by DNA replication through a single-strand nick or gap. Such a situation causes what is known as a collapsed replication fork and is fixed by several pathways of homologous recombination including the RecBCD pathway.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In this pathway, a three-subunit enzyme complex called RecBCD initiates recombination by binding to a blunt or nearly blunt end of a break in double-strand DNA. After RecBCD binds the DNA end, the RecB and RecD subunits begin unzipping the DNA duplex through helicase activity. The RecB subunit also has a nuclease domain, which cuts the single strand of DNA that emerges from the unzipping process. This unzipping continues until RecBCD encounters a specific nucleotide sequence (5'-GCTGGTGG-3') known as a Chi site.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Upon encountering a Chi site, the activity of the RecBCD enzyme changes drastically. DNA unwinding pauses for a few seconds and then resumes at roughly half the initial speed. This is likely because the slower RecB helicase unwinds the DNA after Chi, rather than the faster RecD helicase, which unwinds the DNA before Chi. Recognition of the Chi site also changes the RecBCD enzyme so that it cuts the DNA strand with Chi and begins loading multiple RecA proteins onto the single-stranded DNA with the newly generated 3' end. The resulting RecA-coated nucleoprotein filament then searches out similar sequences of DNA on a homologous chromosome. The search process induces stretching of the DNA duplex, which enhances homology recognition (a mechanism termed conformational proofreading). Upon finding such a sequence, the single-stranded nucleoprotein filament moves into the homologous recipient DNA duplex in a process called "strand invasion". The invading 3' overhang causes one of the strands of the recipient DNA duplex to be displaced, to form a D-loop. If the D-loop is cut, another swapping of strands forms a cross-shaped structure called a Holliday junction. Resolution of the Holliday junction by some combination of RuvABC or RecG can produce two recombinant DNA molecules with reciprocal genetic types, if the two interacting DNA molecules differ genetically. Alternatively, the invading 3’ end near Chi can prime DNA synthesis and form a replication fork. This type of resolution produces only one type of recombinant (non-reciprocal).


title: Homologous recombination

text: Bacteria appear to use the RecF pathway of homologous recombination to repair single-strand gaps in DNA. When the RecBCD pathway is inactivated by mutations and additional mutations inactivate the SbcCD and ExoI nucleases, the RecF pathway can also repair DNA double-strand breaks. In the RecF pathway the RecQ helicase unwinds the DNA and the RecJ nuclease degrades the strand with a 5' end, leaving the strand with the 3' end intact. RecA protein binds to this strand and is either aided by the RecF, RecO, and RecR proteins or stabilized by them. The RecA nucleoprotein filament then searches for a homologous DNA and exchanges places with the identical or nearly identical strand in the homologous DNA.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Although the proteins and specific mechanisms involved in their initial phases differ, the two pathways are similar in that they both require single-stranded DNA with a 3' end and the RecA protein for strand invasion. The pathways are also similar in their phases of "branch migration", in which the Holliday junction slides in one direction, and "resolution", in which the Holliday junctions are cleaved apart by enzymes. The alternative, non-reciprocal type of resolution may also occur by either pathway.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Immediately after strand invasion, the Holliday junction moves along the linked DNA during the branch migration process. It is in this movement of the Holliday junction that base pairs between the two homologous DNA duplexes are exchanged. To catalyze branch migration, the RuvA protein first recognizes and binds to the Holliday junction and recruits the RuvB protein to form the RuvAB complex. Two sets of the RuvB protein, which each form a ring-shaped ATPase, are loaded onto opposite sides of the Holliday junction, where they act as twin pumps that provide the force for branch migration. Between those two rings of RuvB, two sets of the RuvA protein assemble in the center of the Holliday junction such that the DNA at the junction is sandwiched between each set of RuvA. The strands of both DNA duplexes—the "donor" and the "recipient" duplexes—are unwound on the surface of RuvA as they are guided by the protein from one duplex to the other.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In the resolution phase of recombination, any Holliday junctions formed by the strand invasion process are cut, thereby restoring two separate DNA molecules. This cleavage is done by RuvAB complex interacting with RuvC, which together form the RuvABC complex. RuvC is an endonuclease that cuts the degenerate sequence 5'-(A/T)TT(G/C)-3'. The sequence is found frequently in DNA, about once every 64 nucleotides. Before cutting, RuvC likely gains access to the Holliday junction by displacing one of the two RuvA tetramers covering the DNA there. Recombination results in either "splice" or "patch" products, depending on how RuvC cleaves the Holliday junction. Splice products are crossover products, in which there is a rearrangement of genetic material around the site of recombination. Patch products, on the other hand, are non-crossover products in which there is no such rearrangement and there is only a "patch" of hybrid DNA in the recombination product.


title: Homologous recombination

text: Homologous recombination is an important method of integrating donor DNA into a recipient organism's genome in horizontal gene transfer, the process by which an organism incorporates foreign DNA from another organism without being the offspring of that organism. Homologous recombination requires incoming DNA to be highly similar to the recipient genome, and so horizontal gene transfer is usually limited to similar bacteria. Studies in several species of bacteria have established that there is a log-linear decrease in recombination frequency with increasing difference in sequence between host and recipient DNA.


title: Homologous recombination

text: In bacterial conjugation, where DNA is transferred between bacteria through direct cell-to-cell contact, homologous recombination helps integrate foreign DNA into the host genome via the RecBCD pathway. The RecBCD enzyme promotes recombination after DNA is converted from single-strand DNA–in which form it originally enters the bacterium–to double-strand DNA during replication. The RecBCD pathway is also essential for the final phase of transduction, a type of horizontal gene transfer in which DNA is transferred from one bacterium to another by a virus. Foreign, bacterial DNA is sometimes misincorporated in the capsid head of bacteriophage virus particles as DNA is packaged into new bacteriophages during viral replication. When these new bacteriophages infect other bacteria, DNA from the previous host bacterium is injected into the new bacterial host as double-strand DNA. The RecBCD enzyme then incorporates this double-strand DNA into the genome of the new bacterial host.