Why is sex so popular? The question of why so many organisms reproduce sexually has mystified evolutionary biologists since before Darwin, who wrote that “The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness.” In a recent article in Genome Biology and Evolution titled “What’s genetic variation got to do with it? Starvation-induced self-fertilization enhances survival in Paramecium,” the authors suggest that the molecular mechanisms underlying sex and the stress response may be more tightly coupled than previously appreciated, providing a new explanation for the widespread prevalence of sex in nature (Thind et al. 2020).

中文翻译：

---

亮点：性别作为微生物中的压力管理

为什么性如此受欢迎？自达尔文问世以来，为什么有这么多生物体通过性繁殖的问题一直是个神秘的进化生物学家，他写道：“整个主题还被隐藏在黑暗中。” 在《基因组生物学与进化》最近发表的一篇文章中， “遗传变异与它有什么关系？饥饿引起的自我受精可提高草履虫的存活率。”作者认为，性行为和应激反应的分子机制可能比以前认为的更为紧密，为自然界性行为的普遍流行提供了新的解释（Thind等2020）。