The evolutionary genomics of sexual recombination

令人费解的动物有性繁殖的优势问题一再被认为是生物学中的主要悬而未决的问题之一，并得到了大量的研究。减数分裂重组是进化的基本力量之一，在产生和混合有性生物中存在的遗传多样性方面发挥着非常重要的作用。重组也被认为有助于塑造真核基因组的内容。在这里，我们建议使用一个特别强大的自然系统-根结线虫来研究繁殖系统和重组在塑造动物基因组内容和多样性方面的作用。我们将第一次能够在系统发育设计中对根本不同的生殖模式采取比较基因组学观点。总而言之，这些研究将让我们对有性繁殖在塑造基因组内容中所起的作用有一个新颖而有力的理解。

The puzzling predominance of sexual reproduction amongst animals has been repeatedly identified as one of the major outstanding questions in biology and has received an enormous amount of study. Meiotic recombination is one of the fundamental forces of evolution and plays a very significant role in both generating and mixing the genetic diversity present in sexual organisms. Recombination is also suggested to be instrumental in shaping the content of eukaryotic genomes. Here we propose to study the role of breeding system and recombination in shaping the content and diversity of animal genomes using an exceptionally powerful natural system- the Root Knot Nematodes. We will, for the first time, be able to take a comparative genomic view of radically different reproductive modes in a phylogenetic design. Together these studies will give us a novel and powerful understanding of the role sexual reproduction plays in shaping genome content.