Evolutionary Advantage, Recombination, and Adaptationin Experimental Yeast Populations

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Most familiar plants and animals reproduce by sex, with male and female parents combining their genes to produce offspring. Yet there is still no clear explanation for why. Sex is an inefficient way to transmit genes: only half of your genes end up in your offspring, while if you cloned yourself, your offspring would carry all your genes. Also, the reshuffling of genes that occurs during sex can break up gene combinations that already work well together. Most hypotheses about sex propose that it is somehow better to produce genetically diverse offspring. Experiments with yeast will test some of these predictions. Yeast are ideal for these tests because sex is optional, so otherwise identical sexual and asexual populations can be allowed to adapt with and without sex. Apart from contributing to our understanding of a basic feature of biology, this project may illuminate some of the consequences of controversial new technological alternatives to sexual reproduction, such as cloning. By eliminating sex, cloning may have unknown long-term effects on the lineage of cloned organisms. The project will also provide excellent opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to participate in the study of evolution, to observe it directly as it occurs, and to understand it as an everyday process