Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, Rennes, France.
Sex Dev. 2012;6(6):325-8. doi: 10.1159/000342879. Epub 2012 Sep 12.
Sex is one of the greatest puzzles in evolutionary biology. A true meiotic process occurs only in eukaryotes, while in bacteria, gene transcription is fragmentary, so asexual reproduction in this case really means clonal reproduction. Sex could stem from a signal that leads to increased reproductive output of all interacting individuals and could be understood as a secondary consequence of primitive metabolic reactions. Meiotic sex evolved in proto-eukaryotes to solve a problem that bacteria did not have, namely a large amount of DNA material, occurring in an archaic step of proto-cell formation and genetic exchanges. Rather than providing selective advantages through reproduction, sex could be thought of as a series of separate events which combines step-by-step some very weak benefits of recombination, meiosis, gametogenesis and syngamy.
性是进化生物学中最大的谜题之一。真正的减数分裂过程仅发生在真核生物中，而在细菌中，基因转录是不完整的，因此在这种情况下的无性繁殖实际上意味着克隆繁殖。性可能源于一种信号，这种信号会导致所有相互作用的个体的生殖产出增加，并可以被理解为原始代谢反应的次要后果。减数分裂性在原核生物中进化，以解决细菌没有的问题，即大量的 DNA 物质，发生在原细胞形成和遗传交换的古老步骤中。性不是通过繁殖提供选择优势，而是可以被视为一系列单独的事件，这些事件逐步结合了重组、减数分裂、配子发生和受精的一些非常微弱的益处。
