FOR IMMEDIATE LAUNCH Sept. 3, 2013
BL MINGTON, Ind. — Ground-breaking new research from a group of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University shows the very first time how asexual lineages of the species are d med certainly not from an extended, sluggish accumulation of the latest mutations, but alternatively from fast-paced gene conversion procedures that merely unmask pre-existing deleterious recessive mutations.
Photo by Indiana University
Distinguished Professor of Biology Michael Lynch
Geneticists have long bet in the popularity of intimate reproduction over asexual reproduction situated in a big part on the method called Muller’s ratchet, the device through which a genome accrues deleterious and irreversible mutations following the host system has lost its capacity to carry out of the essential gene-shuffling task of recombination.
The work that is new the laboratory of IU Distinguished Professor of Biology Michael Lynch rather shows that most deleterious DNA sequences adding to the extinction procedure are now contained in the intimate ancestors, albeit in recessive type, and just become uncovered via fast-paced gene transformation and deletion procedures that prevent the fit genes from a single associated with the parental chromosomes.
A model organism for the study of reproduction that is more commonly known as the water flea, the team discovered that every asexual genotype shared common combinations of alleles for two different chromosomes transmitted by asexual males without recombination after sequencing the entire genomes of 11 sexual and 11 asexual genotypes of Daphnia pulex. Continue reading “Contagious asexuality’ is principal in intimate genotypes”