Mixed knobs in corn cobs.

Maize heterochromatic knobs cheat female meiosis by forming neocentromeres that bias their segregation into the future egg cell. In this issue of Genes & Development, Swentowsky and colleagues (pp. 1239-1251) show that two types of knobs, those composed of 180-bp and TR1 sequences, recruit their own novel and divergent kinesin-14 family members to form neocentromeres.