Gene conversion empowers natural selection in a clonal fish species - PubMed

7 hours ago

Gene conversion enables natural selection in the clonal Amazon molly fish, defying theoretical expectations of mutational decay.
The Amazon molly, a clonal species, has existed for over 100,000 years without the predicted accumulation of deleterious mutations.
Gene conversion helps maintain genetic diversity by creating new clonal lineages where mutations are either reverted or fixed.
This process also resolves hybrid incompatibilities between ancestral haplotypes.
Despite changes in chromatin structure, the asexual haplotypes retain the mutational landscapes of their progenitor species.
The findings challenge traditional views on the disadvantages of asexual reproduction and provide new insights into its evolutionary trade-offs.

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