Recombination: the good, the bad and the variable
Recombination, the process by which DNA strands are broken and repaired, producing new combinations of alleles, occurs in nearly all multicellular organisms and has important implications for many evolutionary processes. The effects of recombination can be good, as it can facilitate adaptation, but...
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Published in | Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Vol. 372; no. 1736; p. 20170279 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
The Royal Society
19.12.2017
The Royal Society Publishing Royal Society, The |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Recombination, the process by which DNA strands are broken and repaired, producing new combinations of alleles, occurs in nearly all multicellular organisms and has important implications for many evolutionary processes. The effects of recombination can be good, as it can facilitate adaptation, but also bad when it breaks apart beneficial combinations of alleles, and recombination is highly variable between taxa, species, individuals and across the genome. Understanding how and why recombination rate varies is a major challenge in biology. Most theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to understanding the role of recombination in the evolution of sex—comparing between sexual and asexual species or populations. How recombination rate evolves and what impact this has on evolutionary processes within sexually reproducing organisms has received much less attention. This Theme Issue focusses on how and why recombination rate varies in sexual species, and aims to coalesce knowledge of the molecular mechanisms governing recombination with our understanding of the evolutionary processes driving variation in recombination within and between species. By integrating these fields, we can identify important knowledge gaps and areas for future research, and pave the way for a more comprehensive understanding of how and why recombination rate varies. |
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Bibliography: | Theme issue ‘Evolutionary causes and consequences of recombination rate variation in sexual organisms’ compiled and edited by Jessica Stapley, Philine G. D. Feulner, Susan E. Johnston, Anna W. Santure and Carole M. Smadja ObjectType-Article-1 content type line 23 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 PMCID: PMC5698631 One contribution of 13 to a theme issue ‘Evolutionary causes and consequences of recombination rate variation in sexual organisms’. |
ISSN: | 0962-8436 1471-2970 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rstb.2017.0279 |