MAV ROUNDUP

Genetics on the Spectrum

Lizard study looks at asexual reproduction

A team led by biologists at UTA has published a study supporting the theory that species that reproduce asexually have more harmful genetic mutations than those utilizing sexual reproduction.

In the study, Jose Maldonado, a biology doctoral student, and his co-authors tested this theory by studying Aspidoscelis, a genus of whiptail lizards. Due to their high abundance and distribution throughout the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, these reptiles are an excellent model system to study the fundamental cellular mechanisms of parthenogenesis and the genomic consequences of asexuality.

The team sampled multiple populations of both asexual and sexual whiptail species throughout the southwestern U.S. and received additional tissue samples from collections at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“Our study demonstrates that when whiptail lizards transition from reproducing sexually to asexually, it is followed by the accumulation of harmful mutations in the mitochondrial genome,” Maldonado says. “If asexuals accumulate more harmful mutations than their sexual counterparts, as our findings show, this could explain why asexual reproduction is rare in nature and why sex is the dominant form of reproduction in the natural world.”