Abstract：
BACKGROUND:The Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) is a small unisexual fish that has been suspected of being threatened by extinction from the stochastic accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations that is caused by Muller's ratchet in non-recombining populations. However, no detailed quantification of the extent of this threat is available. RESULTS:Here we quantify genomic decay in this fish by using a simple model of Muller's ratchet with the most realistic parameter combinations available employing the evolution@home global computing system. We also describe simple extensions of the standard model of Muller's ratchet that allow us to deal with selfing diploids, triploids and mitotic recombination. We show that Muller's ratchet creates a threat of extinction for the Amazon molly for many biologically realistic parameter combinations. In most cases, extinction is expected to occur within a time frame that is less than previous estimates of the age of the species, leading to a genomic decay paradox. CONCLUSION:How then does the Amazon molly survive? Several biological processes could individually or in combination solve this genomic decay paradox, including paternal leakage of undamaged DNA from sexual sister species, compensatory mutations and many others. More research is needed to quantify the contribution of these potential solutions towards the survival of the Amazon molly and other (ancient) asexual species.
journal_name
BMC Evol Bioljournal_title
BMC evolutionary biologyauthors
Loewe L,Lamatsch DKdoi
10.1186/1471-2148-8-88subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2008-03-19 00:00:00pages
88issn
1471-2148pii
1471-2148-8-88journal_volume
8pub_type
杂志文章abstract：BACKGROUND:Glycolysis and subsequent fermentation is the main energy source for many anaerobic organisms. The glycolytic pathway consists of ten enzymatic steps which appear to be universal amongst eukaryotes. However, it has been shown that the origins of these enzymes in specific eukaryote lineages can differ, and so...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-6-101
更新日期：2006-11-23 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The 18S rRNA gene is one of the most important molecular markers, used in diverse applications such as molecular phylogenetic analyses and biodiversity screening. The Mollusca is the second largest phylum within the animal kingdom and mollusks show an outstanding high diversity in body plans and ecological a...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-10-70
更新日期：2010-03-09 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The majority of the subspecies of Daucus carota have not yet been discriminated clearly by various molecular or morphological methods and hence their phylogeny and classification remains unresolved. Recent studies using 94 nuclear orthologs and morphological characters, and studies employing other molecular ...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-016-0806-x
更新日期：2016-10-28 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:NASP is an essential protein in mammals that functions in histone transport pathways and maintenance of a soluble reservoir of histones H3/H4. NASP has been studied exclusively in Opisthokonta lineages where some functional diversity has been reported. In humans, growing evidence implicates NASP miss-regulat...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-14-139
更新日期：2014-06-20 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Prior to the sequencing of the human genome it was typically assumed that, tandem duplication aside, gene order is for the most part random. Numerous observers, however, highlighted instances in which a ligand was linked to one of its cognate receptors, with some authors suggesting that this may be a general...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-5-62
更新日期：2005-11-08 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Dung beetles (subfamily Scarabaeinae) are popular model organisms in ecology and developmental biology, and for the last two decades they have experienced a systematics renaissance with the adoption of modern phylogenetic approaches. Within this period 16 key phylogenies and numerous additional studies with ...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-016-0822-x
更新日期：2016-11-29 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Recent molecular dating estimates for placental mammals echo fossil inferences for an explosive interordinal diversification, but typically place this event some 10-20 million years earlier than the Paleocene fossils, among apparently more "primitive" mammal faunas. RESULTS:However, current models of molecu...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-018-1218-x
更新日期：2018-07-03 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:HIV susceptibility and pathogenicity exhibit both interindividual and intergroup variability. The etiology of intergroup variability is still poorly understood, and could be partly linked to genetic differences among racial/ethnic groups. These genetic differences may be traceable to different regimes of nat...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-11-173
更新日期：2011-06-20 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Probabilistic methods have progressively supplanted the Maximum Parsimony (MP) method for inferring phylogenetic trees. One of the major reasons for this shift was that MP is much more sensitive to the Long Branch Attraction (LBA) artefact than is Maximum Likelihood (ML). However, recent work by Kolaczkowski...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-5-50
更新日期：2005-10-06 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Transposable elements (TE) have attracted much attention since they shape the genome and contribute to species evolution. Organisms have evolved mechanisms to control TE activity. Testis expressed 19 (Tex19) represses TE expression in mouse testis and placenta. In the human and mouse genomes, Tex19 and Secre...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-015-0506-y
更新日期：2015-10-12 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has greatly impacted the genealogical history of many lineages, particularly for prokaryotes, with genes frequently moving in and out of a line of descent. Many genes that were acquired by a lineage in the past likely originated from ancestral relatives that have since gone ext...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-12-85
更新日期：2012-06-13 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Socially cued anticipatory plasticity (SCAP) has been proposed as a widespread mechanism of adaptive life-history shifts in semelparous species with extreme male mating investment. Such mating systems evolved several times independently in spiders and male reproductive success should critically depend on tim...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-016-0736-7
更新日期：2016-08-26 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Drosophila melanogaster often shows correlations between latitude and phenotypic or genetic variation on different continents, which suggests local adaptation with respect to a heterogeneous environment. Previous phenotypic analyses of latitudinal clines have investigated mainly physiological, morphological,...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-015-0316-2
更新日期：2015-03-13 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Sexual selection favours the evolution of male bioactive substances transferred during mating to enhance male reproductive success by affecting female physiology. These effects are mainly well documented for separate-sexed species. In simultaneous hermaphrodites, one of the most peculiar examples of transfer...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-016-0672-6
更新日期：2016-05-13 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:GATA transcription factors influence many developmental processes, including the specification of embryonic germ layers. The GATA gene family has significantly expanded in many animal lineages: whereas diverse cnidarians have only one GATA transcription factor, six GATA genes have been identified in many ver...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-9-207
更新日期：2009-08-20 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The regulation of cellular membrane trafficking in all eukaryotes is a very complex mechanism, mostly regulated by the Rab family proteins. Among all membrane-enclosed organelles, melanosomes are the cellular site for synthesis, storage and transport of melanin granules, making them an excellent model for st...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-016-0596-1
更新日期：2016-01-27 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Small insertions and deletions occur in humans at a lower rate compared to nucleotide changes, but evolve under more constraint than nucleotide changes. While the evolution of insertions and deletions have been investigated using ape outgroups, the now available genome of a Neandertal can shed light on the e...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-017-1018-8
更新日期：2017-08-04 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The increasing number of assembled mammalian genomes makes it possible to compare genome organisation across mammalian lineages and reconstruct chromosomes of the ancestral marsupial and therian (marsupial and eutherian) mammals. However, the reconstruction of ancestral genomes requires genome assemblies to ...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-13-258
更新日期：2013-11-21 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Timing the origin of human malarias has been a focus of great interest. Previous studies on the mitochondrial genome concluded that Plasmodium in primates, including those parasitic to humans, radiated relatively recently during a process where host switches were common. Those investigations, however, assume...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-11-299
更新日期：2011-10-12 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Orb-web weaving spiders and their relatives use multiple types of task-specific silks. The majority of spider silk studies have focused on the ultra-tough dragline silk synthesized in major ampullate glands, but other silk types have impressive material properties. For instance, minor ampullate silks of orb-...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-017-0927-x
更新日期：2017-03-14 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Numerous biological functions of long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) have been identified. However, the contribution of lincRNAs to the domestication process has remained elusive. Following domestication from their wild ancestors, animals display substantial changes in many phenotypic traits. Therefor...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-017-1036-6
更新日期：2017-08-15 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Males of many species adjust their reproductive tactics with regard to their condition and status. For example, large males may develop weapons and fight for access to females, whereas small or undernourished males do not express costly weapons or ornaments and sneak copulations. Different condition-dependen...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-7-114
更新日期：2007-07-10 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Very little is known on how changes in circadian rhythms evolve. The noctuid moth Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) consists of two strains that exhibit allochronic differentiation in their mating time, which acts as a premating isolation barrier between the strains. We investigated the genetic ...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-017-0911-5
更新日期：2017-03-06 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The existence of "ancient asexuals", taxa that have persisted for long periods of evolutionary history without sexual recombination, is both controversial and important for our understanding of the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction. A lack of sex has consequences not only for the ecology of th...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-8-194
更新日期：2008-07-07 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Reproductive skew, the uneven distribution of reproductive success among individuals, is a common feature of many animal populations. Several scenarios have been proposed to favour either high or low levels of reproductive skew. Particularly a male-biased operational sex ratio and the asynchronous arrival of...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-015-0469-z
更新日期：2015-09-03 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The enzyme phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, PEPCK, occurs in its guanosine-nucleotide-using form in animals and a few prokaryotes. We study its natural genetic variation in Colias (Lepidoptera, Pieridae). PEPCK offers a route, alternative to pyruvate kinase, for carbon skeletons to move between cytosolic g...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-13-9
更新日期：2013-01-12 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Recently we proposed an evolutionary explanation for a spinal pathology that afflicts many people, intervertebral disc herniation (Plomp et al. [2015] BMC Evolutionary Biology 15, 68). Using 2D data, we found that the bodies and pedicles of lower vertebrae of pathological humans were more similar in shape to...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-019-1550-9
更新日期：2019-12-16 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Gene duplication and subsequent functional divergence especially expression divergence have been widely considered as main sources for evolutionary innovations. Many studies evidenced that genetic regulatory network evolved rapidly shortly after gene duplication, thus leading to accelerated expression diverg...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/1471-2148-12-111
更新日期：2012-07-09 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:Volvocine algae provide a suitable model for investigation of the evolution of multicellular organisms. Within this group, evolution of the body plan from flattened to spheroidal colonies is thought to have occurred independently in two different lineages, Volvocaceae and Astrephomene. Volvocacean species un...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-019-1452-x
更新日期：2019-06-11 00:00:00
abstract：BACKGROUND:The genus Ilex (Aquifoliaceae) has a near-cosmopolitan distribution in mesic habitats from tropical to temperate lowlands and in alpine forests. It has a high rate of hybridization and plastid capture, and comprises four geographically structured plastid groups. A previous study showed that the plastid rbcL ...
journal_title：BMC evolutionary biology
pub_type： 杂志文章
doi：10.1186/s12862-019-1521-1
更新日期：2019-10-21 00:00:00
