Review
Nature Reviews Genetics 8, 139-149 (February 2007) | doi:10.1038/nrg1985
The evolution of sex: empirical insights into the roles of epistasis and drift
J. Arjan G. M. de Visser1 & Santiago F. Elena2 About the authors
Abstract
Despite many years of theoretical and experimental work, the explanation for why sex is so common as a reproductive strategy continues to resist understanding. Recent empirical work has addressed key questions in this field, especially regarding rates of mutation accumulation in sexual and asexual organisms, and the roles of negative epistasis and drift as sources of adaptive constraint in asexually reproducing organisms. At the same time, new ideas about the evolution of sexual recombination are being tested, including intriguing suggestions of an important interplay between sex and genetic architecture, which indicate that sex and recombination could have affected their own evolution.
- View At a Glance
Author affiliations
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, 6703 BD Wageningen, The Netherlands.
- Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-UPV, 46022 València, Spain.
Correspondence to: J. Arjan G. M. de Visser1 Email: arjan.devisser@wur.nl
Correspondence to: Santiago F. Elena2 Email: sfelena@ibmcp.upv.es
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
How missing genes interactNature Genetics News and Views (01 Apr 2007)
Evolutionary genetics Unravelling gene interactionsNature News and Views (27 Nov 1997)
See all 6 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Genome complexity, robustness and genetic interactions in digital organismsNature Letters to Editor (12 Aug 1999)
Genomic buffering mitigates the effects of deleterious mutations in bacteriaNature Genetics Letter (01 Dec 2005)
See all 27 matches for Research
