Conserved meiotic machinery in Glomus spp., a putatively ancient asexual fungal lineage.

ABSTRACT: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) represent an ecologically important and evolutionarily intriguing group of symbionts of land plants, currently thought to have propagated clonally for over 500 Myr. AMF produce multinucleate spores and may exchange nuclei through anastomosis, but meiosis has never been observed in this group. A provocative alternative for their successful and long asexual evolutionary history is that these organisms may have cryptic sex, allowing them to recombine alleles and compensate for deleterious mutations. This is partly supported by reports of recombination among some of their natural populations. We explored this hypothesis by searching for some of the primary tools for a sustainable sexual cycle--the genes whose products are required for proper completion of mei

SUBMITTER: Halary S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3184777 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature