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1.
  总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1  
Abstract.— We investigated the dynamics of adaptation of the unicellular chlorophyte Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to new and hostile conditions of growth provided by novel carbon substrates in the dark. The experiment was designed to contrast perennially asexual lines with lines that had experienced one or more sexual episodes. All lines were capable of adapting to the novel environment. The sexual lines, however, showed greater adaptation over the course of the experiment, especially in more complex environments. Moreover, the effect of sex on adaptation increased with the number of successive sexual episodes. The time-course of adaptation showed that sex initially caused an increase in the standardized variance of fitness and an initial drop in mean fitness, at least after a second or third sexual episode. These short-term effects were followed by a period of recovery during which the fitness of sexual lines eventually exceeded that of asexual lines. The increase in mean fitness was mirrored by a decrease in the standardized variance of fitness relative to asexuals, suggesting that directional selection used up the variation generated by meiotic recombination and thereby conferred a fitness advantage to the sexual lines. These results support the Weismann-Fisher-Muller hypothesis for the maintenance of sex in natural populations.  相似文献   

2.
  总被引:2,自引:0,他引:2  
According to classical evolutionary theory, sexual recombination can generate the variation necessary to adapt to changing environments and thereby confer an evolutionary advantage of sexual over asexual reproduction. Using the green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, we investigated the effect of a single sexual episode on adaptation of heterotrophic growth on different carbon sources. In an initial mixture of isolates, sex was induced and the resulting offspring constituted the sexual populations, along with any unmated vegetative cells; the unmated mixture of isolates represented the asexual populations. Mean and variance in division rates (i.e., fitness) were measured four times during approximately 50 generations of vegetative growth in the dark on all possible combinations of four carbon sources. Consistent with effects of recombination of epistatic genes in linkage disequilibrium, sexual populations initially had a higher variance in fitness, but their mean fitness was lower than that of asexual populations, possibly due to recombinational load. Subsequently, fitness of sexual populations exceeded that of asexual ones, but finally they regained parity in both mean and variance of fitness. Although recombination was not more effective on more complex substrates, these results generally support the idea that sex can accelerate adaptation to novel environments.  相似文献   

3.
    
The continued existence of sex, despite many the costs it entails, still lacks an adequate explanation, as previous studies demonstrated that the effects of sex are environment-dependent: sex enhances the rate of adaptation in changing environments, but the benefits level off in benign conditions. To the best of our knowledge, the potential impact of different patterns of environmental change on the magnitude of these benefits received less attention in theoretical studies. In this paper, we begin to explore this issue by examining the effect of the rate of environmental deterioration (negatively correlated with population survival rate), on the benefits of sex. To investigate the interplay of sex and the rate of environmental deterioration, we carried out a long-term selection experiment with a unicellular alga (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), by manipulating mode of reproduction (asexual, facultative or obligate sexual) and the rate of environmental deterioration (an increase of salt concentration). We monitored both the population size and extinction dynamics. The results revealed that the relative advantage of sex increased at the intermediate rate and plateaued at the highest rate of environmental deterioration. Obligate sexual populations had the slowest extinction rate under the intermediate rate of environmental deterioration, while facultative sexuality was favoured under the high rate-treatment. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to demonstrate that the interplay of sex and the rate of environmental deterioration affects the probability of survival, which indicates that mode of reproduction may be an important determinant of survival of the anthropogenic-induced environmental change.  相似文献   

4.
    
The adaptive function of sex has been extensively studied, while less consideration has been given to the potential downstream consequences of sex on evolution. Here, we investigate one such potential consequence, the effect of sex on the repeatability of evolution. By affecting the repeatability of evolution, sex could have important implications for biodiversity, and for our ability to make predictions about the outcome of environmental change. We allowed asexual and sexual populations of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to evolve in novel environments and monitored both their change in fitness and variance in fitness after evolution. Sex affected the repeatability of evolution by changing the importance of the effect of selection, chance, and ancestral constraints on the outcome of the evolutionary process. In particular, the effects of sex were highly dependent on the initial genetic composition of the population and on the environment. Given the lack of a consistent effect of sex on repeatability across the environments used here, further studies to dissect in more detail the underlying reasons for these differences as well as studies in additional environments are required if we are to have a general understanding of the effects of sex on the repeatability of evolution.  相似文献   

5.
衣藻有性生殖的分子机制   总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1       下载免费PDF全文
衣藻作为分子生物学研究的模式材料,被广泛用于植物光合作用、鞭毛组装与功能、细胞周期与节律、细胞信号传导与光感受、细胞识别等重要生物学过程的研究,而且衣藻有性生殖的分子机制与人类某些疾病的发生机制存在联系.该文对国内外近年来有关莱茵衣藻在有性生殖过程中凝集素的动态分布,包括鞭毛粘连、补充、传递、脱粘连、凝集素合成的正调节,以及与性凝集素行为有关的基因研究进展进行综述,以阐明衣藻有性生殖的分子机制,为人类的疾病研究提供参考.  相似文献   

6.
    
We investigate how different rates of environmental change affect adaptive outcomes and dynamics by selecting Chlamydomonas populations for over 200 generations in environments where the rate of change varies. We find that slower rates of environmental change result in end populations that grow faster and pay a lower cost of adaptation than populations that adapt to a sudden change of the same magnitude. We detected partial selective sweeps in adapting populations by monitoring changes in marker frequency in each population. Although populations adapting to a sudden environmental change showed evidence of mutations of large effect segregating early on, populations adapting to slow rates of change showed patterns that were consistent with mutations of relatively small effect occurring at less predictable times. This work suggests that rates of environmental change may fundamentally alter adaptive dynamics and outcomes of adaptation by changing the size and timing of fitness increases. We suggest that using mutations of smaller effect during adaptation may result in lower levels of pleiotropy and historical constraints, which could in turn result in higher fitness by the end of the experiment.  相似文献   

7.
    
De novo mutations are central for evolution, since they provide the raw material for natural selection by regenerating genetic variation. However, studying de novo mutations is challenging and is generally restricted to model species, so we have a limited understanding of the evolution of the mutation rate and spectrum between closely related species. Here, we present a mutation accumulation (MA) experiment to study de novo mutation in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas incerta and perform comparative analyses with its closest known relative, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Using whole-genome sequencing data, we estimate that the median single nucleotide mutation (SNM) rate in C. incerta is μ = 7.6 × 10−10, and is highly variable between MA lines, ranging from μ = 0.35 × 10−10 to μ = 131.7 × 10−10. The SNM rate is strongly positively correlated with the mutation rate for insertions and deletions between lines (r >0.97). We infer that the genomic factors associated with variation in the mutation rate are similar to those in C. reinhardtii, allowing for cross-prediction between species. Among these genomic factors, sequence context and complexity are more important than GC content. With the exception of a remarkably high C→T bias, the SNM spectrum differs markedly between the two Chlamydomonas species. Our results suggest that similar genomic and biological characteristics may result in a similar mutation rate in the two species, whereas the SNM spectrum has more freedom to diverge.  相似文献   

8.
9.
    
In this paper we study whether and how a number of arbitrarily chosen marker mutations interact in their effect on fitness, which is relevant for our understanding of the evolution of sex. If epistasis is synergistic, the main function of sex may be to facilitate selection against deleterious mutations. We use strains of the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger with variable combinations of marker mutations that have been obtained by isolating segregants from a diploid between a wild-type strain and a related strain carrying a marker mutation on each of its eight chromosomes. The marker mutations include five auxotrophic and two resistance mutations. As a measure of fitness the mycelium growth rate on supplemented medium has been used. The results suggest that the marker mutations have independent effects on fitness, and hence they do not support the deterministic mutation hypothesis of the evolution of sex. The apparent linear relationship between mutation number and log fitness is the result of interactions of opposite type (i.e., synergistic and antagonistic) that cancel each other's effect. However, due to an isolation bias caused by the fact that not all possible strains with many mutations could be isolated, the results may be relatively biased towards an antagonistic relationship between mutation number and log fitness.  相似文献   

10.
    
Deleterious mutation accumulation plays a central role in evolutionary genetics, conservation biology, human health, and evolutionary medicine (e.g., methods of viral attenuation for live vaccines). It is therefore important to understand whether and how quickly populations with accumulated deleterious mutational loads can recover fitness through adaptive evolution. We used laboratory experimental evolution with four long-term mutation-accumulation (MA) lines of Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes to study the dynamics of such fitness evolution. We previously showed that when homozygous mutant populations are evolved in large population sizes, they can rapidly achieve wild-type fitness through the accumulation of new beneficial or compensatory epistatic mutations. Here, we expand this approach to demonstrate that when replicate lineages are initiated from the same mutant genotype, phenotypic evolution is only sometimes repeatable. MA genotypes that recovered ancestral fitness in the previous experiment did not always do so here. Further, the pattern of adaptive evolution in independently evolved replicates was contingent upon the MA genotype and varied among fitness-related traits. Our findings suggest that new beneficial mutations can drive rapid fitness evolution, but that the adaptive process is rendered somewhat unpredictable by its susceptibility to chance events and sensitivity to the evolutionary history of the starting population.  相似文献   

11.
    
The geographical distribution of sexual and related asexual species has been suggested to correlate with habitat stability; sexual species tend to be in stable habitats (K‐selection), whereas related asexual taxa tend to be in unstable habitats (r‐selection). We test whether this broad‐scale pattern can be re‐created at a microevolutionary scale by experimentally evolving populations of facultatively sexual rotifers under different ecological conditions. Consistent with the pattern in nature, we find that the rate of sex evolves to lower levels in the r‐selected than in K‐selection environments. We consider several different explanations for these results.  相似文献   

12.
It has been known that arginine is used as the basic amino acid in the ?subunit of cytochrome b559 (Cyt b559) except histidine. However, previous studies have focused on the function of histidine in the activities of photosystem (PS) Ⅱ and there are no reports regarding the structural and/or functional roles of arginine in PSII complexes. In the present study,two arginine18 (R18) mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were constructed using site-directed mutagenesis, in which R18 was replaced by glutamic acid (E) and glycine (G). The results show that the oxygen evolution of the PSII complex in the R18G and R18E mutants was approximately 60% of wild-type (WT) levels and that, after irradiation at high light intensity, oxygen evolution for the PSII of mutants was reduced to zero compared with 40% in WT cells. The efficiency of light capture by PSII (Fv/Fm) of R18G and R18E mutants was approximately 42%-46% that of WT cells. Furthermore, levels of the ?subunit of Cyt b559 and PsbO proteins were reduced in thylakoid membranes compared with WT. Overall, these data suggest that R18 plays a significant role in helping Cyt b559 maintain the structure of the PSII complex and its activity,although it is not directly bound to the heme group.  相似文献   

13.
Compensatory mutations improve fitness in genotypes that contain deleterious mutations but have no beneficial effects otherwise. As such, compensatory mutations represent a very specific form of epistasis. We show that intragenic compensatory mutations occur non-randomly over gene sequence. Compensatory mutations are more likely to appear at some sites than others. Moreover, the sites of compensatory mutations are more likely than expected by chance to be near the site of the original deleterious mutation. Furthermore, compensatory mutations tend to occur more commonly in certain regions of the protein even when controlling for clustering around the site of the deleterious mutation. These results suggest that compensatory evolution at the protein level is partially predictable and may be convergent.  相似文献   

14.
    
The environmental change experienced by many contemporary populations of organisms poses a serious risk to their survival. From the theory of evolutionary rescue, we predict that the combination of sex and genetic diversity should increase the probability of survival by increasing variation and thereby the probability of generating a type that can tolerate the stressful environment. We tested this prediction by comparing experimental populations of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that differ in sexuality and in the initial amount of genetic diversity. The lines were serially propagated in an environment where the level of stress caused by salt increased over time from fresh water to the limits of marine conditions. In the long term, the combination of high diversity and obligate sexuality was most effective in supporting evolutionary rescue. Most of the adaptation to high‐salt environments in the obligate sexual‐high diversity lines had occurred by midway through the experiment, indicating that positive genetic correlations of adaptation to lethal stress with adaptation to sublethal stress greatly increased the probability of evolutionary rescue. The evolutionary rescue events observed in this study provide evidence that major shifts in ways of life can arise within short time frames through the action of natural selection in sexual populations.  相似文献   

15.
We report genetic evidence supporting the existence of suppressor genes in the chloroplast that act on a mitochondrial mutation that impairs heterotrophic growth in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. One of these suppressors also acts on a point mutation in the rbcL gene in the chloroplast. These results are consistent with previous data showing that mitochondrial protein synthesis depends on chloroplast protein synthesis in C. reinhardtii. The nature of the interaction between chloroplasts and mitochondria is discussed in light of the requirement for import of tRNAs by plant mitochondria. Received: 28 January 1999 / Accepted: 29 April 1999  相似文献   

16.
    
Carbonic anhydrases (CAs) are ubiquitously distributed and are grouped into three structurally independent classes (αCA, βCA and γCA). Most αCA enzymes are monomeric, but αCA1 from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a dimer that is uniquely stabilized by disulfide bonds. In addition, during maturation an internal peptide of 35 residues is removed and three asparagine residues are glycosylated. In order to obtain insight into the effects of these structural features on CA function, wild‐type C. reinhardtiiαCA1 has been crystallized in space group P65, with unit‐cell parameters a = b = 134.3, c = 120.2 Å. The crystal diffracted to 1.88 Å resolution and a preliminary solution of its crystal structure has been obtained by the MAD method.  相似文献   

17.
    
Chlamydomonas reinhardtiiα‐type carbonic anhydrase (Cr‐αCA1) is a dimeric enzyme that catalyses the interconversion of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid. The precursor form of Cr‐αCA1 undergoes post‐translational cleavage and N‐glycosylation. Comparison of the genomic sequences of precursor Cr‐αCA1 and other αCAs shows that Cr‐αCA1 contains a different N‐terminal sequence and two insertion sequences. A 35‐residue peptide in one of the insertion sequences is deleted from the precursor during maturation. The crystal structure of the mature form of Cr‐αCA1 has been determined at 1.88 Å resolution. Each subunit is cleaved into the long and short peptides, but they are linked together by a disulfide bond. The two subunits are linked by a disulfide bond. N‐Glycosylations occur at three asparagine residues and the attached N‐glycans protrude into solvent regions. The subunits consist of a core β‐sheet structure composed of nine β‐strands. At the centre of the β‐sheet is the catalytic site, which contains a Zn atom bound to three histidine residues. The amino‐acid residues around the Zn atom are highly conserved in other monomeric and dimeric αCAs. The short peptide runs near the active site and forms a hydrogen bond to the zinc‐coordinated residue in the long chain, suggesting an important role for the short peptide in Cr‐αCA1 activity.  相似文献   

18.
Genetic interactions can strongly influence the fitness effects of individual mutations, yet the impact of these epistatic interactions on evolutionary dynamics remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the evolutionary role of epistasis over 50,000 generations in a well-studied laboratory evolution experiment in Escherichia coli. The extensive duration of this experiment provides a unique window into the effects of epistasis during long-term adaptation to a constant environment. Guided by analytical results in the weak-mutation limit, we develop a computational framework to assess the compatibility of a given epistatic model with the observed patterns of fitness gain and mutation accumulation through time. We find that a decelerating fitness trajectory alone provides little power to distinguish between competing models, including those that lack any direct epistatic interactions between mutations. However, when combined with the mutation trajectory, these observables place strong constraints on the set of possible models of epistasis, ruling out many existing explanations of the data. Instead, we find that the data are consistent with a “two-epoch” model of adaptation, in which an initial burst of diminishing-returns epistasis is followed by a steady accumulation of mutations under a constant distribution of fitness effects. Our results highlight the need for additional DNA sequencing of these populations, as well as for more sophisticated models of epistasis that are compatible with all of the experimental data.  相似文献   

19.
  总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1  
Abstract. Here I present a deterministic model of the coevolution of parasites with the acquired immunity of their hosts, a system in which coevolutionary oscillations can be maintained. These dynamics can confer an advantage to sexual reproduction within the parasite population, but the effect is not strong enough to outweigh the twofold cost of sex. The advantage arises primarily because sexual reproduction impedes the response to fluctuating epistasis and not because it facilitates the response to directional selection—in fact, sexual reproduction often slows the response to directional selection. Where the cost of sexual reproduction is small, a polymorphism can be maintained between the sexuals and the asexuals. A polymorphism is maintained in which the advantage gained due to recombination is balanced by the cost of sex. At much higher costs of sex, a polymorphism between the asexual and sexual populations can still be maintained if the asexuals do not have a full complement of genotypes available to them, because the asexuals only outcompete those sexuals with which they share the same selected alleles. However, over time we might expect the asexuals to amass the full array of genotypes, thus permanently eliminating sexuals from the population. The sexuals may avoid this fate if the parasite population is finite. Although the model presented here describes the coevolution of parasites with the acquired immune responses of their hosts, it can be compared with other host-parasite models that have more traditionally been used to investigate Red Queen theories of the evolution of sex.  相似文献   

20.
It has been known that arginine is used as the basic amino acid in the α-subunit of cytochrome bsss (Cyt bsss) except histidine. However, previous studies have focused on the function of histidine in the activities of photosystem (PS) Ⅱ and there are no reports regarding the structural and/or functional roles of arginine in PSll complexes. In the present study, two arginine18 (R18) mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were constructed using site-directed mutagenesis, in which R18 was replaced by glutamic acid (E) and glycine (G). The results show that the oxygen evolution of the PSII complex in the R18G and R18E mutants was approximately 60% of wild-type (WT) levels and that, after irradiation at high light intensity, oxygen evolution for the PSll of mutants was reduced to zero compared with 40% in WT cells. The efficiency of light capture by PSll (Fv/Fm) of R18G and R18E mutants was approximately 42%-46% that of WT cells. Furthermore, levels of the α-subunit of Cyt bsss and PsbO proteins were reduced in thylakoid membranes compared with WT. Overall, these data suggest that R18 plays a significant role in helping Cyt bss9 maintain the structure of the PSll complex and its activity, although it is not directly bound to the heme group.  相似文献   

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