Öztoprak Hüsna, Gao Shan, Guiglielmoni Nadège, Brandt Alexander, Zheng Yichen, Errbii Mohammed, Bednarski Viktoria, Becker Christian, Becker Kerstin, Borgschulte Lea, Burak Katharina Atsuko, Dion-Côté Anne-Marie, Leonov Vladislav, Opherden Linda, Shimano Satoshi, Bast Jens
Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Adv. 2025 Jan 24;11(4):eadn0817. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adn0817.
Some unique asexual species persist over time and contradict the consensus that sex is a prerequisite for long-term evolutionary survival. How they escape the dead-end fate remains enigmatic. Here, we generated a haplotype-resolved genome assembly on the basis of a single individual and collected genomic data from worldwide populations of the parthenogenetic diploid oribatid mite to identify signatures of persistence without sex. We found that haplotypes diverge independently since the transition to asexuality at least 20 million years ago in European lineages, contrasting Japanese and Canadian lineages. Multiple lines of evidence indicate conservation of one haplotype copy and relaxed selection in the other for the ancient asexual lineages. These findings highlight the evolutionary genomic singularities of ancient asexual oribatid mites that may have contributed to escaping the early demise typically associated with asexuality.
一些独特的无性物种长期存在，这与“有性生殖是长期进化生存的先决条件”这一共识相矛盾。它们如何逃脱走向死胡同的命运仍然是个谜。在这里，我们基于单个个体生成了一个单倍型解析的基因组组装，并从世界各地孤雌生殖的二倍体甲螨种群中收集了基因组数据，以识别无性生殖的持久性特征。我们发现，自至少2000万年前向无性生殖转变以来，欧洲谱系中的单倍型独立分化，这与日本和加拿大谱系形成对比。多条证据表明，古老的无性谱系中一个单倍型拷贝得以保留，而另一个则经历了放松选择。这些发现突出了古老的无性甲螨在进化基因组学上的独特之处，这些独特之处可能有助于它们逃脱通常与无性生殖相关的早期灭亡。
