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Death by asexuality: IU biologists uncover new path for mutations to arise

“Contagious Asexuality” is Dominant in Sexual Genotypes

Univ. of Indiana media release

Ground-breaking new research from a team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University shows for the first time how asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast-paced gene conversion processes that simply unmask pre-existing deleterious recessive mutations.

Geneticists have long bet on the success of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction based in a large part on the process known as Muller’s ratchet, the mechanism by which a genome accrues deleterious and irreversible mutations after the host organism has lost its ability to carry out the important gene-shuffling job of recombination.

The new work from the laboratory of IU Distinguished Professor of Biology Michael Lynch instead indicates that most deleterious DNA sequences contributing to the extinction process are actually present in the sexual ancestors, albeit in recessive form, and simply become exposed via fast-paced gene conversion and deletion processes that eliminate the fit genes from one of the parental chromosomes.

After sequencing the entire genomes of 11 sexual and 11 asexual genotypes of Daphnia pulex, 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…

(read more: University of Indiana)

(via rhamphotheca)