title: Have sex or not? Lessons from bacteria.
abstract: Sex is one of the greatest puzzles in evolutionary biology. A true meiotic process occurs only in eukaryotes, while in bacteria, gene transcription is fragmentary, so asexual reproduction in this case really means clonal reproduction. Sex could stem from a signal that leads to increased reproductive output of all interacting individuals and could be understood as a secondary consequence of primitive metabolic reactions. Meiotic sex evolved in proto-eukaryotes to solve a problem that bacteria did not have, namely a large amount of DNA material, occurring in an archaic step of proto-cell formation and genetic exchanges. Rather than providing selective advantages through reproduction, sex could be thought of as a series of separate events which combines step-by-step some very weak benefits of recombination, meiosis, gametogenesis and syngamy.
authors.affiliation: Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, Rennes, France. thierry.lode@univ-rennes1.fr
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lodé
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004247:DNA; D056890:Eukaryota; D008540:Meiosis; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012098:Reproduction; D012100:Reproduction, Asexual / Q000235:genetics; D012723:Sex
chemical_list: D004247:DNA