ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2003
No slave to sex.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Host switching via rare sex: Oncorhynchus mykiss as a vector in fusion of three Gyrodactylus salaris genomes into a sexual-clonal population on a landlocked Salmo salar (Monogenea, Platyhelminthes).Folia parasitologica · 2026Article
- Gain and Loss of Heterozygosity in the Genome of the Asexual Nematode Halicephalobus mephisto.Journal of molecular evolution · 2025Article
- Comparative genome anatomy reveals evolutionary insights into a unique amphitriploid fish.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Haplotype divergence supports long-term asexuality in the oribatid miteProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- First annotated draft genomes of nonmarine ostracods (Ostracoda, Crustacea) with different reproductive modes.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2021Article
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- Genomic signatures of recombination in a natural population of the bdelloid rotifer Adineta vaga.Nature communications · 2020Article
- No evidence for accumulation of deleterious mutations and fitness degradation in clonal fish hybrids: Abandoning sex without regrets.Molecular ecology · 2020Article
- How clonal are clones? A quest for loss of heterozygosity during asexual reproduction in Daphnia magna.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2019Article
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- Longevity and plasticity of CFTR provide an argument for noncanonical SNP organization in hominid DNA.PloS one · 2014Article
- The oxidative damage initiation hypothesis for meiosis.Plant reproduction · 2013Review
- Article
- The key role of epigenetics in the persistence of asexual lineages.Genetics research international · 2012Article
- Do clones degenerate over time? Explaining the genetic variability of asexuals through population genetic models.Biology direct · 2011Article
- On the genealogy of asexual diploids.Journal of computational biology : a journal of computational molecular cell biology · 2011Article
- Ancestral state reconstruction reveals multiple independent evolution of diagnostic morphological characters in the "Higher Oribatida" (Acari), conflicting with current classification schemes.BMC evolutionary biology · 2010Article
- Living males of the 'ancient asexual' Darwinulidae (Ostracoda: Crustacea).Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2006Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fully asexual lineages cannot purge accumulating mutations from their genome through recombination. In ancient asexuals that have persisted without sex for millions of years, this should lead to high allelic divergences (the 'Meselson effect') as has been shown for bdelloid rotifers. Homogenizing mechanisms can counter this effect, resulting in low genetic diversity within and between individuals. Here, we show that the ancient asexual ostracod species Darwinula stevensoni has very low nucleotide sequence divergence in three nuclear regions. Differences in genetic diversity between embryos and adults furthermore indicate that up to half of the observed genetic changes in adults can be caused by somatic mutations. Likelihood permutation tests confirm the presence of gene conversion in the multi-copy internal transcribed spacer sequence, but reject rare or cryptic forms of sex as a general explanation for the low genetic diversity in D. stevensoni. Other special mechanisms (such as highly efficient DNA repair) might have been selected for in this ancient asexual to overcome the mutational load and Muller's ratchet. In this case, our data support these hypotheses on the prevalence of sex, even if the two extant ancient asexual groups (bdelloids and darwinulids) seem to follow opposite evolutionary strategies.
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