The role of sex in evolution

Sex is a powerful force for evolution. On the face of it, sex seems like an absurdly complicated way to reproduce. Prokaryotic organisms, bacteria and archea, have a much faster a simpler system, where the cell simply duplicates its DNA and splits in half into two identical daughter cells. The entire process, called mitosis, only takes 20 minutes. This means that under ideal circumstances a single bacterium can divide to produce 8 offspring in the first hour. In the second hour that single precursor cell could form 64 offspring, after 6 hours a single cell could form over 200,000 daughter cells. This asexual reproduction is so efficient that it only operates at capacity for very short durations, as exponential growth of a single cell could use up the resources of an entire planet within days. Typically a bacterium ticks over slowly by scavenging what resources are available, only to explode into exponential asexual growth when new resources become available and a race to exploit them occurs.

Compare this to the elaborate, time-consuming and often bizarre process of eukaryotic sex, which multicellular organisms from plants to fungi to animals use to reproduce. Sex (and the accompanying mate selection) is one of the most difficult and dangerous parts of an individual’s life, and even passionate advocates of the activity find it difficult to explain. Yet through an evolutionary lens, sex provides very concrete advantages. The best illustration of the advantages of sex come from yeast mating, as these simple organisms are capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction.

Simple sex

Yeast can be thought of as being halfway between simple bacteria and complex multicellular organisms like humans. In terms of lifestyle and behaviour, yeast operate like bacteria – single celled organisms capable of an independent existence through the use of resources in their direct environment. Inside the cell, however, yeast are clearly eukaryotic organisms, with the same basic machinery for cell division, metabolism and survival as plants and animals. It is therefore convenient to think of yeast as essentially human-like cells, trapped in an early bacterial-like lifestyle. This is an oversimplification of course: bacteria, yeast and humans are all highly evolved organisms and none have remained static in evolutionary time, but it is a useful oversimplification.

So how do yeast reproduce? Asexually, like the bacteria they share a lifestyle with? Or sexually, like the multicellular organisms they are genetically closest to? The answer is both. When yeast are in a rich nutrient environment they reproduce asexually like bacteria. A single cell undergoes mitosis, duplicating its DNA and then splitting into two daughter cells, each identical to the parental cell. This gives the yeast all the advantages of bacterial reproduction – very simple rapid reproduction to win the race for abundant resources. The parental cell was successful in the environment, so the identical daughter cells should be equally successful and proliferate likewise.

However as noted above, exponential growth can never continue unabated, sooner rather than later resources become limiting or some other factor stresses the survival of the yeast. At this point yeast have a trick available that bacteria do not – sex. Instead of undergoing dormancy, the yeast mate.

In the best understood system, that of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, there are two sexes of yeast, a and a, controlled by a single gene. Mating is very simple, the a cells release a chemical called ‘a factor’ and produce a receptor that causes them to migrate towards the chemical ‘a factor’. By contrast, the a cells release a chemical called ‘a factor’ and produce a receptor that causes them to migrate towards the chemical ‘a factor’. The two yeast cells, one a and one a, attract each other and fuse into a single cell. This cell now has two different copies of the yeast genome, one from each parent.

The a-a fused yeast cell can now undergo a complicated cellular division process called meiosis. Unlike mitosis, where the cell duplicates its genome and divides in two, meiosis involves duplicating the genome and dividing in four. This is possible because the a-a fused yeast cell has two copies of the genome to start with, so duplication gives four copies, one for each of the four daughter cells that result.

The important difference between mitosis and meiosis is the splicing of two different genomes to form unique combinations. Mitosis just duplicates the existing genome. Meiosis starts with two different genomes, and during the duplication processes these genomes are jumbled up together, creating new combinations of old characteristics. This means that all four daughter cells at the end are unique and different from the original parental cells.

The advantage conferred by sex is very straight forward – the parental cells were not dealing well with the environment they were in, since yeast mating occurs only under stress. Therefore why reproduce more cells that cannot cope with the environment? Instead the yeast takes a life-or-death gamble that a combination of genetic information from another cell will produce offspring better able to deal with the environment. In a simple scenario there would be two yeast strains, one able to deal with acidity and one able to digest complex carbohydrates. A change in environment to a high acidity environment where the only resources available are complex carbohydrates will stress both parental strains. However, by sex there is a chance that one of the daughter cells will inherit the acid resistance of one parent and the ability to digest complex carbohydrates from the other parent. Other daughter cells will not be so lucky and will die, but that one daughter cell with the chance combination of two necessary characteristics will be able to divide asexually and rapidly reap the rewards of a new resource.

In one final complication, yeast can change sex. A single gene makes yeast either a or a, so after mating and meiosis the four daughter cells include two a cells and two a cells. If a single a cell is successful in the new environment, asexual reproduction creates exact copies, so all progeny will be a cells. This would create an obvious problem if a new environmental stress requires another round of mating, so yeast carry spare “silent” copies of a and a genes and use these backup copies to flip from one sex to another, to make sure a population is always a mixture of a and a yeast.