Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Advances, 34(9), 2023

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi2804

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Cosegregation of recombinant chromatids maintains genome-wide heterozygosity in an asexual nematode

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

In asexual animals, female meiosis is modified to produce diploid oocytes. If meiosis still involves recombination, this is expected to lead to a rapid loss of heterozygosity, with adverse effects on fitness. Many asexuals, however, have a heterozygous genome, the underlying mechanisms being most often unknown. Cytological and population genomic analyses in the nematode Mesorhabditis belari revealed another case of recombining asexual being highly heterozygous genome-wide. We demonstrated that heterozygosity is maintained despite recombination because the recombinant chromatids of each chromosome pair cosegregate during the unique meiotic division. A theoretical model confirmed that this segregation bias is necessary to account for the observed pattern and likely to evolve under a wide range of conditions. Our study uncovers an unexpected type of non-Mendelian genetic inheritance involving cosegregation of recombinant chromatids.