A little bit of sex matters for genome evolution in asexual plants

Genome evolution in asexual organisms is theoretically expected to be shaped by various factors: first, hybrid origin, and polyploidy confer a genomic constitution of highly heterozygous genotypes with multiple copies of genes; second, asexuality confers a lack of recombination and variation in populations, which reduces the efficiency of selection against deleterious mutations; hence, the accumulation of mutations and a gradual increase in mutational load (Muller’s ratchet) would lead to rapid extinction of asexual lineages; third, allelic sequence divergence is expected to result in rapid divergence of lineages (Meselson effect). Recent transcriptome studies on the asexual polyploid complex Ranunculus auricomus using single-nucleotide polymorphisms confirmed neutral allelic sequence divergence within a short time frame, but rejected a hypothesis of a genome-wide accumulation of mutations in asexuals compared to sexuals, except for a few genes related to reproductive development. We discuss a general model that the observed incidence of facultative sexuality in plants may unmask deleterious mutations with partial dominance and expose them efficiently to purging selection. A little bit of sex may help to avoid genomic decay and extinction.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Frontiers in Plant Science

• Publication date

  2015-02-20

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fpls.2015.00082PMID 25750646PMCID 4335465
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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