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In the natural public , stealing is a necessary and frequent scheme for survival . Every animal group includes opportunists that snatch others ' fresh killing , nobble nesting materials or swipe prospective mates from distrait competitor .
But only one case of animal uses theft at the genetic level for reproduction — an all - female linage ofsalamandersin theAmbystomagenus , which contain lashings of species and is widespread across North America . These females Paraguay tea with multiple males from otherAmbystomaspecies and hijack copy of their partners ' genomes , researchers discovered about a decade ago .
The all-female salamander hybrid Ambystoma has found a simple formula for reproductive success: Mate with multiple males and hijack segments of each partner’s genome to pass on to her offspring.
However , scientists latterly establish that the salamanders were n’t just stealing the Male ' genomes . They ’re incorporating transmissible material from Male across multiple mintage into their own genetic computer code and using all of them at the same clock time — a cognitive process that is otherwise unheard of in brute , researchers reported in a raw study . [ Album : Bizarre Frogs , Lizards and Salamanders ]
In most animals , sexual reproductiontypically follows a few introductory rules : female bring out eggs , a male person ’s sperm fertilizes the bollock and the genome of the offspring incorporates one set of chromosome inherited from the mother and one from the Father of the Church .
But something peculiar happened around 5 million to 6 million years ago when a pair ofAmbystomasalamanders mate — a mutation emerged that produced a lineage of all - distaff salamanders , which endure to the present 24-hour interval , accord to canvass principal author Maurine Neiman , an associate professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Iowa .
Among all theAmbystomaspecies , this lineage has defied easy categorization . The females can mate successfully with several species ofAmbystomamales ; they use the male person ' spermatozoon to fertilize their testis — or to simply kick - start an egg ’s development — but they produce only daughters , apparently making offspring that are basically imitate fromtheir own DNA , Neiman tell Live Science .
From there , the narration have even unearthly .
“A shifting kaleidoscope genome”
About 10 years ago , scientists discovered that this all - female descent practices something so rarefied that they demand a new term to describe it — kleptogenesis , or " cistron thievery . " The females were looting genomes from manlike partners in multiple metal money , and lay away the DNA within their own cellular telephone to pass at least some of it along to their daughter , Neiman explained .
" They pick up a genome and they use it maybe for a few generations , and then they drop it again , so there ’s not really a continuous phylogeny of genome — they ’re just borrowing and dropping , and borrowing and dropping , again and again . They have a shifting kaleidoscope genome that ’s made up ofcopies of genomesfrom other specie , " Neiman allege .
How exactly the poker were doing this — and how all those genes were behaving under these highly unusual term — remained a enigma , but it was of late land to brightness in the new study , according to the lead author Kyle McElroy , a doctorial candidate in the Department of Biology at the University of Iowa .
" Until this newspaper , there were no attempts to expect at gene expression or whole - genome use in these salamanders , " McElroy told Live Science .
Brother, can you spare a genome?
investigator from two labs — one at the University of Iowa and one at Ohio State University — examined a distaff salamander from the unisex lineage that had three " extra " genome copies , all steal from three manful metal money that it had mated with . They used a technique called RNA sequence to look at 3,000 cistron in the female person , to see which of the genes across all the genomes were being expressed ( or activated ) ; 72 percent of the cistron allow for by all three better half were express equally , the subject area source reported .
" Most of what ’s have it off aboutgene expressionin polyploid [ organisms with multiple genome copies ] comes from plants — they shut out off the special genome and only one really gets used — the other degrades over time , " McElroy explain .
" What ’s interesting about this species is that these genome combination are n’t pay off — they uptake novel one and drop other ones . This brute has genomes from three different specie that are all somehow workingand being expressed , " he said .
While it is still unclear which traits these genes control and how the stove poker select which fortune of the male genomes they keep and which they dispose from generation to generation , these fascinating animal serve as an crucial example of the unexpected path that evolution can take towardreproductive success , Neiman told Live Science .
" biota is always weirder than you’re able to imagine , " she tote up .
The finding were published on-line April 1 in the journalGenome Biology and Evolution .
Original article onLive Science .
