Modeling of the spread of non-adaptive traits in a natural population due to self-compatibility

Abstract

Agrobacteria – is a type of microorganism capable of transferring a fragment of its DNA (T-DNA) into plant genome. That consequently leads to tumor degeneration of transformed cell. Being an evolutionary process devoted to survivance and multiplication of bacterial population, on the other hand, it is pathogenic to the attacked plant. However, some transformed individuals have not merely survived, but spread their genes and replaced their not-transformed relatives.The purpose of the article is to make an assumption explaining a possible reason of such event. The hypothesis emphasizes on the change of sexual reproduction options among transformed plants. Three possible situations are described in the article: switch from cross-pollination to self-pollination, prezygotic incompatibility and postzygotic incompatibility. The results have shown that the most probable and logical situation is a break of self-incompatibility mechanism, and self-pollination domination among transformed plants.The findings suggest this approach could also be useful for maladaptive traits simulation that change organism's sexual reproduction options.