Submitted by: Submitted by crabs
Views: 10
Words: 6813
Pages: 28
Category: Science and Technology
Date Submitted: 10/04/2015 04:17 AM
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...