The evolutionary genomics of sexual recombination

令人困惑的动物有性生殖的优势已被反复确定为生物学中的主要突出问题之一，并已接受了大量的研究。减数分裂重组是进化的基本力量之一，在有性生物中产生和混合遗传多样性方面起着非常重要的作用。也有人建议，在塑造真核生物基因组的内容，纯化是有用的。在这里，我们建议使用一个非常强大的自然系统-根结线虫研究育种系统和重组在塑造动物基因组的内容和多样性中的作用。我们将第一次能够在系统发育设计中对完全不同的生殖模式进行比较基因组学观察。这些研究将使我们对有性生殖在塑造基因组内容中所起的作用有一个新的、强有力的理解。

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.