32 new grants made for innovative technology R&D
...technologies to stabilize superior crop hybrids by asexual seed production ("self-cloning") thereby improving yields of major food, feed, fiber and biomass crops and reducing hybrid seed production costs. Glennan Microsystems, Inc. (Cleveland, Ohio) Advanced Fuel and Emission Control (AFEC) System Tec...Sex versus survival: A tradeoff at geographical range limits
...at populations switch from being sexual to totally asexual across the northern limit of the species' geograph...ment makes sex relatively unsuccessful compared to asexual clonal reproduction (where plants make genetically identical offspring by vegetative budding). This ...Dream home: Malaria parasite renovates to suit its tastes
...mans. Once in the blood, the parasite's continuous asexual multiplication inside the red blood cells is respo...For example, the researchers found that during the asexual stage, the parasite, which is present in the parasitophorous vacuole, remodels the erythrocyte by fo...Same-sex mating discovered in a toxic fungus
...e unisexual fruiting occurred strictly through the asexual division of cells into identical clones, Heitman s..., the researchers found that, rather than being an asexual process, the hallmarks of mating occur during fruiting of alpha isolates. Unisexual fruiting involve...MBL researchers probe how an ancient microbe thrives and evolves without sex
...' DNA that has enabled them to succeed where other asexual species have failed. In a paper published in th...handle DNA transposons more efficiently than other asexual species. Transposons are small snippets of "junk DNA" that sexual reproduction compensates for, but ...Mosquitoes are more attracted to individuals infected with malaria
...e malaria, one infected with the non-transmissible asexual stage of the disease, and one with no infection. A device called an olfactometer wafted the odours of each participant towards the mosquitoes. Researchers measured which child most attracted the hungry bugs. Koella et al. found that individuals attra...Lack of sex could be a signpost to extinction, claim researchers
...al College London believe that when species become asexual they could be on their way to extinction. The rese...the genetic structure of Penicillium marneffei, an asexual fungus. The researchers found that although P. marneffei spores were able to spread over large dista...Flatworm genes may provide insights into human diseases, researchers say
...dentify genes. Previously sequenced ESTs came from asexual planarians. Sexual planarians don't develop reproductive structures until after they've reached adulthood, when their stem cells go to work in a process known as epigenetic germ cell specification. Asexual planarians reproduce by transverse fission -...Sex: It's costly but worth it. Just ask a microbe
...icrobes reproduce asexually, but they are actually asexual and sexual," says Xu. Using a fungus that has two ...eir fitness. "We noticed that mating stunted their asexual reproduction because each partner spent more time attracting the other than nourishing its own growt......that sex is common in plants and animals, and that asexual species are typically short-lived, but why this sh... Paland, who led the study. "Our results show that asexual deviants are burdened by an ever-increasing number of genetic changes that negatively affect the fun...Sex: Why bother? Evolutionary mysteries probed at UH
...t in modern organisms, stopping them from becoming asexual again? One University of Houston professor thinks...increased robustness to mutations when compared to asexual ones. These findings suggest a good news/bad news scenario when it comes to the evolutionary impli...Biggest physics meeting of the year
...lar organisms. Why don't organisms instead choose asexual reproduction, which is a bit riskier (no built-in mechanism for preventing the accumulation of mutations) but typically quicker (no time spent in finding a suitable mate). In a new mathematical model that directly addresses the evolutionary advantag...Largest physics meeting of the year, in Denver
...apes in cellular networks (session A5) how large asexual populations adapt (B5.4) natural gas storage in nanoporous carbon (J27.9) a tunable DNA spring in a nanochannel (J21.1) cell-free gene circuits (H34.3) understanding radiotherapy-induced second cancers (H25.7) electrical resistance in ovari...Do you need sex to be a species?
...rbreeding to maintain cohesion, the thinking goes, asexual taxa might not diversify into distinct species. In..., controlled species cohesion and divergence, then asexual taxa should diverge along the same lines as sexually reproducing organisms. And if this were the cas...No sex for 40 million years? No problem
...vers, soils, and on mosses and lichens. These tiny asexual creatures multiply by producing eggs that are gene...nderstanding, because it is generally thought that asexual creatures die out quickly, but these have been around for millions of years. "Our proof that natu...Study of planarians offers insight into germ cell development
...itself by means of fission. In looking at nanos in asexual individuals of this species, the researchers made the surprising discovery that these asexual individuals also express nanos and produce germ cells. Some other mechanism, as yet unknown, prevent......ual The rapid adaptation to the environment in an asexual species is an interesting finding. It contradicts the general opinion that asexual species have low adaptive potential and that they adapt to stress less easily than sexual species. A...