Co-evolution in the Jungle: From Leafcutter Ant Colonies to Chromosomal Ends.

Journal of Molecular Evolution
Ľubomír Tomáška, Jozef Nosek

Abstract

Biological entities are multicomponent systems where each part is directly or indirectly dependent on the others. In effect, a change in a single component might have a consequence on the functioning of its partners, thus affecting the fitness of the entire system. In this article, we provide a few examples of such complex biological systems, ranging from ant colonies to a population of amino acids within a single-polypeptide chain. Based on these examples, we discuss one of the central and still challenging questions in biology: how do such multicomponent consortia co-evolve? More specifically, we ask how telomeres, nucleo-protein complexes protecting the integrity of linear DNA chromosomes, originated from the ancestral organisms having circular genomes and thus not dealing with end-replication and end-protection problems. Using the examples of rapidly evolving topologies of mitochondrial genomes in eukaryotic microorganisms, we show what means of co-evolution were employed to accommodate various types of telomere-maintenance mechanisms in mitochondria. We also describe an unprecedented runaway evolution of telomeric repeats in nuclei of ascomycetous yeasts accompanied by co-evolution of telomere-associated proteins. We propo...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 23, 2020·Biomolecules·Veronika VozárikováĽubomír Tomáška

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
genetic modification

Software Mentioned

Geospiza

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