Abstract
Symbioses of prokaryotes and eukaryotes are considered as models to analyze the fundamental issues of genetics and evolutionary biology including trade-off between the reductionist and holistic approaches in the research of biosystems. Symbiotic models allow us to address: 1) emergence of cellular forms of life; 2) formation of multi-genomic eukaryotic cells; 3) evolution of multicellular eukaryotes as of holobionts in which microbial symbionts ensure the hosts’ nutrition, protection from antagonists and stresses as well as developmental regulation. We suggest that ecological and genetic factors responsible for natural history of super-species systems go far beyond the Darwinian paradigm of adaptive evolution based on accumulation of minor changes supported by natural (individual) selection. Specifically, partners’ cooperation involves: a) interspecies altruism, based on formation by symbionts of non-reproducible cellular forms implementing the host-beneficial functions; b) pangenesis assuming the inheritance by hosts of symbionts as of acquired genetic determinants, which are maintained in hologenomes and can donate their genes to nuclear genomes.
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