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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

MEDICINE AND NUTRITION has shifted the Preston Curve. "Further significant finding of Preston's study was that the curve has shifted upwards during the 20th century. This means that life expectancy has increased in most countries, independently of changes in income. Preston credited education, better technology, vaccinations, improved provision of public health services, oral rehydration therapy and better nutrition with these exogenous improvements in health." https://lnkd.in/db2auRq 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

RADICAL MODERN LIFE EXTENSION. "So far as we know, the last hundred years have been the most radical period of life extension in all of human history. At the turn of the twentieth century, life expectancy for Americans was just over 49 years; by 2010, that number had risen to 78.5 years, mostly on account of improved sanitation and basic medicine." https://lnkd.in/df8W2j6 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

UPPER LIMIT OF HUMAN LONGEVITY is estimated at 80-120 years, but more likely 85 years due to the disease burden. https://lnkd.in/dkbhh-F View in LinkedIn

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

CONSERVED YET PLASTIC. "Given the ubiquity of sex, it is remarkable both how conserved the core features are and yet how plastic other aspects appear to be, including how sex is determined and how sexual reproduction is accomplished." http://www.mycologia.org/content/105/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

REVEALING HIDDEN GENETIC VARIATION. "Sex—the mixing of genomes via meiosis and fusion of gametes—is nearly universal to eukaryotic life and encompasses a diverse array of systems and mechanisms. One major role of sex is to bring together alleles carried by different individuals, revealing beneficial genetic variance that is otherwise hidden." https://lnkd.in/eK75j6J View in LinkedIn

EUK LIFE CYCLE #3. "Observed in all plants and some algae, species with alternation of generations have both haploid and diploid multicellular organisms as part of their life cycle.” https://lnkd.in/dvZ2tF3 View in LinkedIn