Haploid-diploid Cycle Research Articles

The Evolution of Sex through the Baldwin Effect.

This article suggests that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. With this explanation for the basic cycle, the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution tuning the amount and frequency of learning experienced by an organism. Using the well-known NK model of fitness landscapes, it is shown that varying landscape ruggedness varies the benefit of the haploid-diploid cycle, whether based upon endomitosis or syngamy. The utility of pre-meiotic doubling and recombination during the cycle are also shown to vary with landscape ruggedness. This view is suggested as underpinning, rather than contradicting, many existing explanations for sex.

Computer simulation of arising of diploid genomes

The haploid–diploid cycle where, under unfavorable conditions the population becomes diploid, is modeled by a Monte-Carlo method in the framework of the Jan–Stauffer–Moseley hypothesis. Diploidy and sex may have first arisen as a way to escape death, when a simple unicellular individual is threatened by too many deleterious mutations. Using a bit string model, we find that in a system where competition is present (through the Verhulst factor), diploids dominate. In this case the transition from haploid to essentially diploid population takes place in a short time interval reminiscent of phase transitions in physical systems.

Evolutionary route to diploidy and sex.

By using a bit-string model of evolution, we find a successful route to diploidy and sex in simple organisms. Allowing the sexually reproducing diploid individuals to also perform mitosis, as they do in a haploid-diploid cycle, leads to the complete takeover of the population by sexual diploids. This mechanism is so robust that even the accidental conversion and pairing of only two diploids give rise to a sexual population.