Zeyl Clifford W, Otto Sarah P
Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2007 May;22(5):223-5. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2007.02.005. Epub 2007 Feb 12.
Despite it being the darling of fungal genomics, we know little about either the ecology or reproductive biology of the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in nature. A recent study by Ruderfer et al. estimated that the ancestors of three S. cerevisiae genomes outcrossed approximately once every 50,000 generations, confirming the view that outcrossing is infrequent in natural populations of S. cerevisiae. This study also inferred the genomic positions of past recombination events. By comparing past recombination events with present-day recombination rates, this study lays the groundwork for determining whether recombination has improved the long-term survival of descendant lineages by bringing together favorable alleles, a longstanding question in evolutionary genetics.
尽管酿酒酵母是真菌基因组学的宠儿，但我们对其在自然环境中的生态学或生殖生物学却知之甚少。鲁德费尔等人最近的一项研究估计，三个酿酒酵母基因组的祖先大约每50000代进行一次杂交，这证实了在酿酒酵母自然种群中杂交很少发生的观点。这项研究还推断了过去重组事件的基因组位置。通过将过去的重组事件与当今的重组率进行比较，该研究为确定重组是否通过汇集有利等位基因提高了后代谱系的长期存活率奠定了基础，这是进化遗传学中一个长期存在的问题。
