Recombination: the good, the bad and the variable

Recombination, the process by which DNA strands are broken and repaired, producing new combinations of alleles, occurs in nearly all multicellular organisms and has important implications for many evolutionary processes. The effects of recombination can be good, as it can facilitate adaptation, but...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2017-12, Vol.372 (1736), p.20170279-20170279
Main Authors: Stapley, Jessica, Feulner, Philine G. D., Johnston, Susan E., Santure, Anna W., Smadja, Carole M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Alleles
Biodiversity
Biological evolution
Coalescing
Crossing Over
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Evolution
Genetic Linkage
Genetic recombination
Genomes
Genomics
Introduction
Life Sciences
Meiosis
Molecular modelling
New combinations
Populations and Evolution
Recombination
Reproduction (biology)
Species
Taxa
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Summary:Recombination, the process by which DNA strands are broken and repaired, producing new combinations of alleles, occurs in nearly all multicellular organisms and has important implications for many evolutionary processes. The effects of recombination can be good, as it can facilitate adaptation, but also bad when it breaks apart beneficial combinations of alleles, and recombination is highly variable between taxa, species, individuals and across the genome. Understanding how and why recombination rate varies is a major challenge in biology. Most theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to understanding the role of recombination in the evolution of sex—comparing between sexual and asexual species or populations. How recombination rate evolves and what impact this has on evolutionary processes within sexually reproducing organisms has received much less attention. This Theme Issue focusses on how and why recombination rate varies in sexual species, and aims to coalesce knowledge of the molecular mechanisms governing recombination with our understanding of the evolutionary processes driving variation in recombination within and between species. By integrating these fields, we can identify important knowledge gaps and areas for future research, and pave the way for a more comprehensive understanding of how and why recombination rate varies.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2017.0279