"Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about clonal interference." – Oscar Wilde (kind of) As we all know, sexual reproduction is not about reproduction. Reproduction is easy. If your goal is to fill the world with copies of your genes, all you need is a good DNA-polymerase to duplicate your genome, and then to divide into two copies of yourself. Asexual reproduction is just better in every way:
> mitochondria seem to be closely related to sex: to my knowledge, organisms with mitochondria always use sexual reproduction, as if mitochondria made sex necessary.
As you yourself point out later, Bdelloid Rotifers and some plants are exceptions to this. Of course, they are descended from sexually reproducing ancestors, but all eukaryotes are descended from the same sexually reproducing ancestor anyway, so this doesn't say very much.
Many, many plants and animals (not humans) are capable of asexual reproduction, too; of course, most of them also use sexual reproduction as well.
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Excellent. 10/10.
Here thanks to Astral Codex Ten/LessWrong. Look forward to more of your writing.
> the two types diverged into big gametes and large gametes
Shouldn't one of those be "small gametes"?
Amazing article, you've got an instant subscriber. Please don't stop doing whatever you do.
I've long preferred my smut to have a sense of humor. This is therefore superb.
Thanks very much for this.
> mitochondria seem to be closely related to sex: to my knowledge, organisms with mitochondria always use sexual reproduction, as if mitochondria made sex necessary.
As you yourself point out later, Bdelloid Rotifers and some plants are exceptions to this. Of course, they are descended from sexually reproducing ancestors, but all eukaryotes are descended from the same sexually reproducing ancestor anyway, so this doesn't say very much.
Many, many plants and animals (not humans) are capable of asexual reproduction, too; of course, most of them also use sexual reproduction as well.
Love this - would you be interested in crossposting on the Seeds of Science "Best of Science Blogging" feed (not sure how else to reach you :)? Requires nothing on your end other than a short author bio blurb. If so, please reach out to us at info@theseedsofscience.org.
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An excellent summary -- thanks for writing it!