If you ’ve seenThe Island , you ’ll have at least one estimation for what a knockoff of yourself might be handy for . Harvesting compatible organ to replace your spent ones is a routine of a stretch from the reality , however , which is that most cloning critters just want a simple result for continuing on their genome . Ilex paraguariensis survival of the fittest is tiring ( on-line dating , am I right ? ) and replication this path mixes up the cistron syndicate , but a cognitive process called thelytokousparthenogenesisenables female to basically print out a copy of themselves without the need for copulation .
A handy alternative , but not one without setbacks . Thelytokous parthenogenesis involves transmissible recombination , which think of that the child bear of it – whilst still technically clones – will be genetically different from their mother . New research put out in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society Bfound that the Cape Apis mellifera , Apis mellifera capensis , has incur a direction around this .
Worker Cape honeybees are roil out using thelytokous virgin birth , a potentially risky road of reproduction owing to the fact that if enough transmissible recombination pass , they could end up too inbred to function . This clearly has n’t hampered the metal money , however , as it was line up that one line of worker bees has been re - cloning since the 1990s , giving rise to century of millions of cloned bee .
“ The two female caste of the Cape honeybee , Apis mellifera capensis , take issue in their mood of reproduction , ” write the sketch writer . “ While workers always reproduce thelytokously , queens always couple and procreate sexually . For worker , it is significant to reduce the frequency of recombination so as to not create offspring that are homozygous . ”
To find out how they were maintain their genetic unity , the researchers forced the queens – who multiply sexually – to reproduce asexually by essentially making a bee chastity smash with a strip of operative tape and some nail varnish . The researchers were then able to compare the asexually reproduce larvae of the queen to those of the workers .
harmonize to a theme fromNew Scientist , the comparison revealed that the pouf ’s asexually reproduced clones exhibited 100 times the amount of genetic recombination realise in the worker bees , whose larvae were near enough genetically identical to the parent . This bespeak that the workers have evolved to present a much lower pace of genetic recombination , most potential because it ’s what works best for them .
“ Evolution is just selecting what ’s doing well at a give sentence , ” saidLaurent Kellerat the University of Lausanne in Switzerland . “ And these honeybee clones are doing quite well as they are . ”
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
