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Intimate yeast: Mating and meiosis

By Guest PostJanuary 13, 2014Scienceasexual reproduction, brewer yeast, candida lusitaniae, candida tropicalis, christine scaduto, chromosome, diploid yeast, diploidy, eukaryotic cell, evolution, exotic sex, haploid lifestyle, haploidy, ime2, intimate yeast, mating, meiosis, polyploidy, raquel kim sherwood, richard bennett, saccharomyces cerevisiae, sandra torres, schizosaccharomyces pombe, sexual, sexual habits, ste12, studying fungal sex, university of california

Mating and meiosis – the specialized cell division that reduces the number of chromosomes in a cell – are related, but in most yeasts they are regulated separately. Not so in Candida lusitaniae, where the two programs work in unison, according to a new study in Nature. Comparison with other species suggests that this fusion may support C. lusitaniae’s “haploid lifestyle” of maintaining only one set of chromosomes in each cell.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — From a biological point of view, the world’s most exotic sex lives may be the ones lived by fungi. As a kingdom, they are full of surprises, and a new one reported in the journal Nature seems sure to titillate the intellects of those who study the evolution of mating and ploidy, the complement of chromosomes in each cell. (more…)

When Plants Go Polyploid

By Guest PostSeptember 15, 2011Nature, Scienceanimal evolution, bananas, chromosomes, coffee, evolutionary biology, evolutionary gamble, genetic information, genome duplication, Israel, itay mayrose, karen magnuson ford, michael barker, microscope, peanuts, plant genomes, plant lineages, polyploid lineages, polyploidy, potatoes, sarah sally otto, shing h zhan, tel aviv university, tobacco

*Plant lineages with multiple copies of their genetic information face higher extinction rates than their relatives, researchers report in Science magazine.*

While duplication of hereditary information is a relatively rare event in animal evolution, it is common in plants. Potatoes, coffee, bananas, peanuts, tobacco, wheat, oats and strawberries, to name but a few, all carry multiple copies of their genetic material, in a condition called polyploidy.

In contrast, most animals including humans are diploid, meaning an individual carries only two copies of each chromosome, the carriers of genetic information, one from each parent. (more…)

Tag Archives: polyploidy

Intimate yeast: Mating and meiosis

When Plants Go Polyploid