Goldteju Tupinambis teguixin. Credit: Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0
A group led by biologists at The University of Texas at Arlington has printed a examine supporting the speculation that species that reproduce asexually have extra dangerous genetic mutations than these using sexual copy.
Jose Maldonado, a UTA doctoral scholar in biology, is lead writer of the brand new paper, titled “Parthenogenesis doubles the speed of amino acid substitution in whiptail mitochondria.” It was printed in May in Evolution, the flagship journal of evolutionary biology.
Co-authors embody T.J. Firneno, a postdoctoral analysis affiliate on the University of Denver who obtained his Ph.D. from UTA in 2020; Alexander Hall, a product software specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific who obtained a Ph.D. from UTA in 2016; and Matt Fujita, UTA affiliate professor of biology, who’s Maldonado’s college advisor and beforehand served in the identical function for Firneno and Hall.
Parthenogenesis is a pure type of asexual copy wherein development and growth of embryos happen with out fertilization by sperm. It is mostly believed that sexual copy results in fewer dangerous genetic mutations than asexual copy.
In their new examine, Maldonado and his co-authors examined this principle by finding out Aspidoscelis, a genus of whiptail lizards. Due to their excessive abundance and distribution all through the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, these reptiles are a wonderful mannequin system to check the basic mobile mechanisms of parthenogenesis and the genomic penalties of asexuality.
The group used entire mitochondrial genome information from asexual and sexual whiptail lizards to analyze their prediction that parthenogenetic lineages accumulate mutations sooner than sexual lineages.
“Our examine demonstrates that when whiptail lizards transition from reproducing sexually to asexually, it’s adopted by the buildup of dangerous mutations within the mitochondrial genome,” Maldonado mentioned. “If asexuals accumulate extra dangerous mutations than their sexual counterparts, as our findings present, this might clarify why asexual copy is uncommon in nature and why intercourse is the dominant type of copy within the pure world.”
The group sampled a number of populations of each asexual and sexual whiptail species all through the southwestern United States and obtained further tissue samples from collections on the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Their analysis confirmed that the transition to asexuality led to relaxed pure choice in parthenogenetic lizards and the buildup of nonsynonymous mutations, which change the protein sequences of a gene and are regularly subjected to pure choice. This helps earlier theoretical predictions that “the lack of intercourse ought to result in an irreversible build-up of deleterious mutations because of a discount within the effectivity of purifying choice, and intercourse facilitates the elimination of dangerous mutations,” they wrote.
“The foremost discovering of our examine is that asexual vertebrates, or no less than these lizards, accumulate amino acid substitutions, which could possibly be doubtlessly dangerous for the organism, at a a lot greater fee than sexual species,” Firneno mentioned. “This is necessary as a result of there’s a paradox that it’s far more pricey to breed sexually, however that it’s the pervading type of copy.”
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More data:
Jose A. Maldonado et al, Parthenogenesis doubles the speed of amino acid substitution in whiptail mitochondria, Evolution (2022). DOI: 10.1111/evo.14509
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University of Texas at Arlington
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Asexual copy results in dangerous genetic mutations (2022, August 1)
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