2007年7月7日星期六

who is the winner in sex evolution? ssDNA or dsDNA?

In prokaryotic cells, ssDNA translocation has widely been adopted in natural transformation and it seems that this type of transformation take an advantage in the evolution of prokaryotic kingdom. In contrast, oocytes receive dsDNA from germ cells and keep it as the double strand form before recombination in the eukaryotic realm. From the perspective of the whole biological evolution, it seems that DNA enter cells with dsDAN form is preferred. The question is, under natural conditions, why prokaryotic cell prefers utilizing ssDNA and degrading the other strand before recombination to making the use of both strands to keep the fidelity of recombination. If we support the idea that eukaryotic cells are evoluted from prokaryotic cells, the prokaryotic transformation should be a inferior form of sex left by the evolution process and there should be some reminiscence of transition this inferior sex behavior to the more advanced one. Considering the importance of sex in proliferation of eukaryotic species, trying to find the reminiscence would reveal some fundamental mechanisms of sex in eukaryotic kingdom. The first step to find the reminiscence is trying to confirm that dsDNA is able to enter into prokaryotic cells and keep its sexual biological activity under natural condition. Then we need to prove that the uptake dsDNA is able to recombinate with the genome DNA of the recipient cell. We know that millions of sperm cells (we can consider these are the donor DNA) are required for a successful impregnation event. If it is true that dsDNA recombination in prokaryotic cells is resemble to impregnation, the chance of successful reombination between dsDNA and genome might also not be very high. However, these accidents pioneered a new biology realm which comprises predominant species in the earth nowadays.

(Note: although no direct evidence is available for proving the dsDNA translocation, some evidences strongly support the existance of dsDNA translocation and the competition between dsDNA transfomration and ssDNA transformation under natural or non-physiological conditions. However, it lacks evidences to prove recombination between dsDNA and chromosomal DNA events under natural conditions)

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