Related papers: A Dual Role for Sex?
This paper develops simplified mathematical models describing the mutation-selection balance for the asexual and sexual replication pathways in {\it Saccharomyces cerevisiae}. We assume diploid genomes consisting of two chromosomes, and we…
The prevalence of sexual reproduction ("sex") in eukaryotes is an enigma of evolutionary biology. Sex increases genetic variation only tells its long-term superiority in essence. The accumulation of harmful mutations causes an immediate and…
Sexual reproduction in Nature requires two sexes, which raises the question why the reproductive scheme did not evolve to have three or more sexes. Here we construct a constrained optimization model based on the communication theory to…
Sex is considered as an evolutionary paradox, since its evolutionary advantage does not necessarily overcome the two fold cost of sharing half of one's offspring's genome with another member of the population. Here we demonstrate that…
Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual organisms as they occur in nature, tested features proposed to explain the evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution is better…
Sex in higher diploids carries a two-fold cost of males that should reduce its fitness relative to cloning and result in its extinction. Instead, sex is widespread and it is clonal species that face early obsolescence. One possible reason…
Commonly recognized evolutionarily relevant effects of sexual reproduction include increased diversity, accelerated adaptation, and constrained accumulation of deleterious mutations, along with a secondary effect of species genotype…
Why sex evolved and it prevails in nature remains one of the great puzzles of evolution. Most biologists would explain that it promotes genetic variability, however this explanation suffers from several difficulties. What advantages might…
We find that the hypothesis made by Jan, Stauffer and Moseley [Theory in Biosc., 119, 166 (2000)] for the evolution of sex, namely a strategy devised to escape extinction due to too many deleterious mutations, is sufficient but not…
The long-term growth rate of populations in varying environments quantifies the evolutionary value of processing the information that biological individuals inherit from their ancestors and acquire from their environment. Previous models…
Why sex is maintained in nature is a fundamental question in biology. Natural genetic transformation (NGT) is a sexual process by which bacteria actively take up exogenous DNA and use it to replace homologous chromosomal sequences. As it…
This paper suggests that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. With this explanation for the basic cycle, the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution…
It has been a puzzling question why some organisms reproduce sexually. Fisher and Muller hypothesized that reproducing by sex can speed up the evolution. They explained that in the sexual reproduction, recombination can combine beneficial…
We generalize the standard Penna bit-string model of biological ageing by assuming that each deleterious mutation diminishes the survival probability in every time interval by a small percentage. This effect is added to the usual lethal but…
It has recently been suggested that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. Thereafter the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution tuning the amount and…
This paper studies the mutation-selection balance in three simplified replication models. The first model considers a population of organisms replicating via the production of asexual spores. The second model considers a sexually…
Using a lattice model based on Monte Carlo simulations, we study the role of the reproduction pattern on the fate of an evolving population. Each individual is under the selection pressure from the environment and random mutations. The…
Using a bit-string model of evolution, we find a successful route to diploidy and sex in simple organisms. Allowing the sexually reproducing diploid individuals to also perform mitosis, as they do in a haploid-diploid cycle, leads to the…
Sex chromosomes have independently evolved in species with separate sexes in most lineages across the tree of life. However, the well-accepted canonical model of sex chromosome evolution is not universally supported. There is no single…
Maintenance of sexual reproduction and genetic recombination imposes physiological costs when compared to parthenogenic reproduction, most prominently: for maintaining the corresponding (molecular) machinery, for finding a mating partner,…