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THE EXCEPTIONS. "On the other hand, very few examples can be found where genome sequencing has led us to infer a strictly asexual nature of the respective eukaryote." https://lnkd.in/deZ8DED View in LinkedIn

MAINSTREAM DOGMA. "From all of the prior observations we can safely conclude that meiotic sex in eukaryotes is the rule. It is very widespread, old, and clearly of major evolutionary importance." https://lnkd.in/deZ8DED View in LinkedIn

SINGLE EVENT. “Sexual reproduction is a nearly universal feature of eukaryotic organisms. Given its ubiquity and shared core features, sex is thought to have arisen once in the last common ancestor to all eukaryotes.” https://lnkd.in/ebVhXPf View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on the gene life cycle. This is at the heart of Darwinian evolution, although even the idea of genes was unknown to Darwin. New genetic material is the engine of diversity and fitness. Nature has found numerous inventive ways to freshen its genetic information content, in order to provide the organism with new phenotypes with which to conquer new niches. And very often, the timeframes involved in new gene generation and fixation are considerable. View in LinkedIn

CO-EVOLUTION. "Maybe we have to recognize eukaryotic evolution as the product of α-proteobacterial endosymbiosis and the momentous, unlikely one-off, it possibly was." https://lnkd.in/deZ8DED View in LinkedIn

HORIZONTAL MECHANISM. "Similar to strict de novo gene origination, horizontal gene transfer, the exchange of genes between genomes from distantly related taxa, can immediately add new genes and functions to a genome. Horizontal gene transfer is a major mechanism for the addition of new genes to prokaryotic genomes, but has also been reported in a number of eukaryotic organisms including plants, insects and fungi." https://lnkd.in/dvpUaYF View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS. "Could Eukaryotic Sex be a Further Symbiogenic Effect due to the (Proto)Mitochondrion?" https://lnkd.in/deZ8DED View in LinkedIn

NON-CODING DNA CONVERSION. "A number of de novo genes originating from non-coding regions have been identified in Drosophila, humans, primates, murine rodents, Protozoa, yeast, rice as well as virus." https://lnkd.in/dvpUaYF View in LinkedIn

PLANET EARTH OXYGEN. "Eukaryotes only arose ∼1.6–2.1 billion years ago, tellingly after the Great Oxygenation Event 2.3 billion years ago, compared with the “rapid” evolution of prokaryotes, which are more than 3.5 billion years old." https://lnkd.in/deZ8DED View in LinkedIn

NEW FUNCTIONS. "Divergence in alternative splicing patterns between duplicate genes can generate distinct transcripts that produce noncoding RNAs or polypeptides with slightly or entirely different functions and rapidly alter duplicate gene structures and functions." https://lnkd.in/dvpUaYF View in LinkedIn