“性的进化和维持问题”是进化生物学问题中的女王（the queen of problems in evolutionary biology），有性生殖的优势被认为在于其比无性生殖能更快地适应新环境，但这种适应性优势的分子基础以及与无性生殖的具体异同均不清楚。我们以单细胞真核模式生物——嗜热四膜虫为研究对象，利用它同时具有有性生殖和无性生殖方式、可纯培养、基因组/转录组数据完备及相关组学和生物信息学技术成熟等特点，以实验进化基因组学的方法通过基因组转录组测序，动态考察其有性生殖和无性生殖种群在新环境（渗透压升高的培养基）连续培养过程中基因组和转录组水平的变化，建立DNA变异、转录调控和基因组结构改变与适应性表型间的关系，在阐明嗜热四膜虫两种生殖方式适应新环境的分子机制的基础上，通过比较两者的一致性、同步性及主导性等问题来探讨两种生殖方式的适应性优势和存在意义，从而大大推动相关进化理论的发展。

The evolution and maintenance of sex is the queen of problems in evolutionary biology. The advantage of sexual reproduction was thought that it increases the rate of adaptation to the novel environment comparing to the asexual reproduction, but the molecular basis of this adaptive advantage and the similarities/differences between sexual and asexual reproduction are still unclear. Using the unicellular eukaryotic model organism -- Tetrahymena thermophila with its advantages including possessing sexual and asexual stages during its life cycle, culture in the lab, complete genomic and transcriptomic database and excellent techniques of omics and bioinformatics, we dynamically detect the changes of DNA, transcriptional regulation and genome organization during the continuous culture in the novel environment (increasing the osmolarity in the medium) by sequencing the genomes and transcriptomes of sexual and asexual populations; construct the relationships among these changes and the adaptive phenotypes; suggest the molecular adaptive mechanisms of sexual and asexual reproduction respectively; discuss the adaptive advantages and the significances of sexual and asexual reproduction inferred from the comparisons of the consistency, synchronization and dominant between their adaptive mechanisms; finally improve the development of this evolutionary theory.