Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA.
Annu Rev Genet. 2011;45:405-30. doi: 10.1146/annurev-genet-110410-132536. Epub 2011 Sep 13.
Sexual reproduction enables genetic exchange in eukaryotic organisms as diverse as fungi, animals, plants, and ciliates. Given its ubiquity, sex is thought to have evolved once, possibly concomitant with or shortly after the origin of eukaryotic organisms themselves. The basic principles of sex are conserved, including ploidy changes, the formation of gametes via meiosis, mate recognition, and cell-cell fusion leading to the production of a zygote. Although the basic tenants are shared, sex determination and sexual reproduction occur in myriad forms throughout nature, including outbreeding systems with more than two mating types or sexes, unisexual selfing, and even examples in which organisms switch mating type. As robust and diverse genetic models, fungi provide insights into the molecular nature of sex, sexual specification, and evolution to advance our understanding of sexual reproduction and its impact throughout the eukaryotic tree of life.
有性生殖使真菌、动物、植物和纤毛类等多种多样的真核生物能够进行基因交换。由于有性生殖的普遍性，人们认为它只进化过一次，可能是与真核生物起源同时或之后不久发生的。有性生殖的基本原理是保守的，包括倍性变化、通过减数分裂形成配子、配偶识别以及导致合子产生的细胞融合。尽管基本原理是共享的，但性决定和有性生殖在自然界中以无数种形式存在，包括具有两种以上交配类型或性别的杂交系统、单性自交，甚至还有一些生物会改变交配类型的例子。真菌作为强大而多样的遗传模型，为我们深入了解有性生殖的分子本质、性别的特化以及进化提供了线索，从而增进我们对有性生殖及其在整个真核生物进化树上的影响的理解。
