Do Bacteria Have Sex?

PERSPECTIVES

und ihre Anwendung auf die Abderhalden’schen

Abwehrfermentreaktion. Hoppe-Seyler’s Zs für

physiologische Chemie 277, 222–232 (1943).

12. Müller-Hill, B. Tödliche Wissenschaft. Die Aussonderung

von Juden, Zigeunern und Geisteskranken. (Rowohlt,

Reinbek, 1984). English translation: Murderous Science.

Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies and

Others in Germany 1933–1945 (Afterword by J. Watson)

(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York, 1998).

13. Posner, G. L. & Ware, J. Mengele. The Complete Story.

(McGraw–Hill, New York, 1986).

Acknowledgements

I thank the Präsidentenkommission of the Max-PlanckGesellschaft (MPG) for giving me access to the letters of

Butenandt and the Archive of the MPG for their excellent help.

OPINION

Do bacteria have sex?

Rosemary J. Redfield

Do bacteria have genes for genetic

exchange? The idea that the bacterial

processes that cause genetic exchange

exist because of natural selection for this

process is shared by almost all

microbiologists and population geneticists.

However, this assumption has been

perpetuated by generations of biology,

microbiology and genetics textbooks

without ever being critically examined.

Terms such as sex and recombination have

different meanings in different contexts.

Here, I use recombination to mean the

breaking and joining of DNA strands; genetic

exchange, gene transfer or HORIZONTAL TRANSFER to refer to processes that produce new

genetic combinations; and meiotic sex to

mean the cyclical alternation between haploid and diploid stages in eukaryotes. Sex

refers to any process selected by the benefits

of genetic exchange.

Understanding the evolutionary causes of

genetic exchange in bacteria has important

implications for our understanding of the

evolution of meiotic sex in eukaryotes. The

primary function of meiotic sex seems to be

to produce new combinations of chromosomal genes, but extensive work by population

geneticists has...