ArticleeLife2020
Genome expansion in early eukaryotes drove the transition from lateral gene transfer to meiotic sex.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Replication Rate-Information Storage Trade-Off Shapes Genome Architecture Across Domains.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- Evolution, Development, and the Incoherence of Sex: A Framework for Multiple Sex Concepts.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Cell size and selection for stress-induced cell fusion in unicellular eukaryotes.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Apomixis and the paradox of sex in plants.Annals of botany · 2024Review
- Cell-type specific and differential expression of LINC-RSAS long noncoding RNA declines in the testes during ageing of the rat.Biogerontology · 2024Article
- Overcoming roadblocks forFrontiers in plant science · 2023Review
- Review
- Repeat sequences limit the effectiveness of lateral gene transfer and favored the evolution of meiotic sex in early eukaryotes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Transposable elements promote the evolution of genome streamlining.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Beyond the pan-genome: current perspectives on the functional and practical outcomes of the distributed genome hypothesis.Biochemical Society transactions · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Prokaryotes acquire genes from the environment via lateral gene transfer (LGT). Recombination of environmental DNA can prevent the accumulation of deleterious mutations, but LGT was abandoned by the first eukaryotes in favour of sexual reproduction. Here we develop a theoretical model of a haploid population undergoing LGT which includes two new parameters, genome size and recombination length, neglected by previous theoretical models. The greater complexity of eukaryotes is linked with larger genomes and we demonstrate that the benefit of LGT declines rapidly with genome size. The degeneration of larger genomes can only be resisted by increases in recombination length, to the same order as genome size - as occurs in meiosis. Our results can explain the strong selective pressure towards the evolution of sexual cell fusion and reciprocal recombination during early eukaryotic evolution - the origin of meiotic sex.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.