Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 16 October 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1168
News
Yeast reveals sexual selection in action
Microbe provides way to track evolution gene by gene.
Why did peacocks develop such elaborate tails? A study that tracks how a gene spreads through a population of yeast could finally help answer such knotty evolutionary questions.
Evolutionary biologists have come up with several models to explain how competition to reproduce affects traits such as the peacock's tail.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
Really an exciting finding. But how is this pheromone discovered? By chance or deliberately? And is sexcial preference caused simply by the dosage of pheromone a yeast gives out? I wonder whether there are some other coeffect mechanisms or some differences in certain not known phynotypes that are correlated with pheromone release?