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CONSERVED SINGLE EVENT. “Sexual reproduction is conserved throughout each supergroup within the eukaryotic tree of life, and therefore thought to have evolved once and to have been present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA).” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

INVARIANT CORE. “These conserved features include: 1) ploidy changes from haploid to diploid to haploid (or diploid to haploid to diploid), 2) the process of meiosis that enables meiotic recombination and halves the ploidy of the genome, and 3) cell–cell fusion between mating partners (a and α cells) or gametes (the sperm and the egg). This ubiquity of the conserved features of sex again speaks to the antiquity of the process.” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on a 2015 article entitled ‘Evolution of sexual reproduction: A view from the fungal kingdom supports an evolutionary epoch with sex before sexes’ by Professor Joseph Heitman from the Duke Medical Center. Fungi are astonishingly diverse and rightfully offer a fresh perspective on this old question about why sexual reproduction arose, when asexual systems seem to work well and are less costly. View in LinkedIn

DEEP COMMONALITY. “The core features of sexual reproduction are conserved in organisms as diverse as the model budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and humans, despite a billion years or more of evolution separating us from our last common shared ancestor.” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

Autumn glory. View in LinkedIn

A COSTLY BUSINESS. “However, these potential benefits of sex are pitted against well-known costs of sexual reproduction: that only 50 % of a parental genome is transmitted to any given progeny, the time and energy required to locate mates, and the breaking apart of well adapted genomic configurations.” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

PATHOGEN EVASION. “There is sound experimental evidence from studies in Caenorhabditis elegans and in naturally occurring snails in New Zealand for this last hypothesis in which sex allows species to keep pace with their pathogens.” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

ESCAPING PARASITES. “Sex may also enable organisms to keep pace with or outrun pathogens, including those both external and those internal (such as transposons).” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

NEW DECK OF CARDS. “Why sex is so pervasive is thought to result from potential benefits conferred by sexual reproduction. These include purging the genome of deleterious mutations and shuffling the genome via independent chromosomal assortment and recombination to give rise to a diverse repertoire of meiotic progeny.” https://lnkd.in/dn4azG7 View in LinkedIn

Remains of an ancient sea with iron metabolizing bacteria that gave a variety of red rocks reflecting the oxidation states on Fe. View in LinkedIn