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Biologists ID molecular block for social 'cheaters'

HOUSTON, Oct. 6, 2004 -- Social cooperation is one of the most difficult adaptations for evolutionary biologists to explain because competition for resources inside the collective should lead to evolved traits that allow individuals to "cheat" the collective, win more resources and reproduce faster than their more cooperative neighbors -- thus undermining the social collective.

In new research, evolutionary biologists and geneticists at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have isolated a genetic mechanism that counters competitive pressures and stabilizes cooperation. Their research appears in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Nature.

Using the latest tools of molecular genetics, the researchers found that the phenomenon known as pleiotropy -- which occurs when a gene affects more than one inherited trait -- plays a crucial role in preventing "cheaters" from exploiting their neighbors within slime mold colonies that are formed by the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

"What we've found is a molecular block to cheating and the genetic mechanism it relies on-- tying cooperative genes tightly with the essential function of reproduction," said paper co-author Joan Strassmann, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice. "Such a mechanism makes the loss of social genes costly to cheaters, and we believe this pleiotropic mechanism may be indicative of a general mechanism that's employed in many species to stabilize cooperation."

The Rice-Baylor experiments draw upon one of the most extraordinary examples of social cooperation among microorganisms: when slime mold amoebae run out of the bacteria they eat, they group, then form a fruiting body in which about one-fifth of the single-celled individuals within the colony sacrifice themselves to form the stalk that holds up the spores.

Before forming a stalk, the colony goes through a stage where it forms a slug-like structure. During this stage, cells produ
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Contact: Jade Boyd
jadeboyd@rice.edu
713-348-6778
Rice University
6-Oct-2004


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