Year: 2022

REMARKABLE FACT. "We can illustrate the conserved features of sexual reproduction by comparing the sexual cycles for two of our favorite systems: ourselves (Homo sapiens) and the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Despite having diverged ~ one billion years ago, the core features of sexual reproduction are conserved." http://www.mycologia.org/content/105/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

HUMAN AND YEAST SEX SIMILARITIES. "These involve: (i) ploidy changes from diploid to haploid to diploid states, (ii) the production of haploid mating partners or gametes from the diploid state via meiosis which recombines the two parental genomes to produce novel genotypes and halves the ploidy and (iii) cell-cell recognition between the mating partners or gametes followed by cell-cell fusion to generate the diploid zygote and complete the cycle." http://www.mycologia.org/content/105/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

COST OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION. "Sexual reproduction carries high costs: First, all else being equal, an asexual population has a twofold advantage in fitness over a sexual population in which males contribute nothing but their genomes to the next generation – the “twofold cost of males”." https://lnkd.in/es2qrc5 View in LinkedIn

TWOFOLD COST. "Now sexual reproduction not only confers benefits but also comes with costs. This includes the well known so-called twofold cost of sex. In most sexual cycles it takes two parents to produce one offspring, resulting in only 50% of any given parent’s genes being transmitted to a progeny. This is contrasted with asexual mitotic reproduction in which one parent can produce one progeny, and in which 100% of the parental genes are transmitted to the progeny, thus resulting in a twofold cost of sex vs. mitotic asexual production of progeny. http://www.mycologia.org/content/105/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

THE AND ENERGY COST. "Finding mates requires time and energy. Finally, recombination may break down existing genetic associations generated by natural selection, leading to “recombination load.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1516/full View in LinkedIn

EU member states to vote on near-total neonicotinoids ban http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43910536 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE deals with the issue of competition for resources between cells and organs of the same organism, and how resources are allocated between competing interests. This perspective of multicellular creatures being a community of cells turns our world view upside down, but at the same time makes perfect sense. It is the microcosm of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, with the overlay of the priority for the survival of the organism as a surrogate for the survival of the population. View in LinkedIn

TOUGH OLD IDEA. "The concept that, during development, different parts of an organism could be in competition with each other is old, and intuitive, but has proven difficult to demonstrate in practice. One reason for this difficulty may be that resource allocation tradeoffs are difficult to measure in organisms that grow and feed continuously, because changes in demands on developmental resources can be met by changes in resource acquisition." View in LinkedIn

"THE PRINCIPLE OF ALLOCATION is a basic concept in ecology. The principle of allocation also underlies some aspects of the concept of tradeoffs and typically is considered in terms of energy. As a result, organisms tend to be unable to be simultaneously exceptionally durable, such as in terms of maintaining homeostasis, and at the same time exceptionally fecund, at least in terms of a limited resource budget." https://lnkd.in/dSYMHu9 View in LinkedIn

REASONS FOR TRADE-OFFS. "Allocation is a big one: a unit of energy, materials, or time that an organism uses to do one thing (say, build a defensive structure) cannot be used to do something else (say, reproduce). Antagonistic pleiotropy is another big one: a mutation that improves one biological function often degrades another (although this is presumably not an ultimate explanation for trade offs, since one can ask why we expect antagonistic pleiotropy). Mutational decay is a third: a mutation that degrades an unused function (think cave fish eyes) will be selectively neutral." https://lnkd.in/dGaAzSA View in LinkedIn