Conversion The term proposed by Winkler (1930) for a process of interaction between alleles at meiosis. The term was re-introduced by Lindegren (1953) to account for aberrant ratios in the products of meiosis, apparently arising from such interaction. Whitehouse and Hastings (1965) have suggested that if gene conversion is due to the correction of mispairing of bases in DNA, it may give rise to reciprocal as well ac nonreciprocal recombination.