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Review

Nature Reviews Genetics 3, 241–251 (1 April 2002) | doi:10.1038/nrg760

Experimental tests of the adaptive significance of sexual recombination

William R. Rice

Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the advantages of sexual recombination — the exchange of hereditary material between different genomes or homologous chromosomes. Many of these candidate benefits have been evaluated in controlled laboratory experiments, which, collectively, strongly indicate that sexual recombination provides important long-term advantages.