Two meiotic recombination genes, rec6 and rec12, from Schizosaccharomyces pombe have been cloned by genetic complementation and their DNA sequences determined. Gene replacements demonstrated that the cloned fragments contained the rec6 and rec12 genes. Further analysis showed that the functional rec6 gene was within a 1.3-kb fragment and rec12 within a 1.7-kb fragment. The nucleotide sequences of these fragments revealed open reading frames (ORFs) predicting 143 amino acids for the rec6 gene product and 139 amino acids for the rec12 gene product. After pat1-114 temperature-induced meiosis, the transcripts of rec6 and rec12 were induced to maximal levels at 2-3 hr, at about the time of premeiotic DNA synthesis, but were present at much lower levels before and after this time. The transient induction of the transcripts and the phenotypes of the mutants suggest that the rec6 and rec12 gene products are involved primarily in the early steps of meiotic recombination in S. pombe. Near the rec6 gene are two additional ORFs potentially encoding proteins with homology to ribosomal protein S7 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ORF137) and to the homeodomain of developmental regulatory proteins (ORF201). The roles of these S. pombe ORFs remain to be determined.