Cargando…
Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi
Some remarkable animal species require an opposite-sex partner for their sexual development but discard the partner’s genome before gamete formation, generating hemi-clonal progeny in a process called hybridogenesis. Here, we discovered a similar phenomenon, termed pseudosexual reproduction, in a ba...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8412948/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34338631 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66234 |
_version_ | 1783747561284173824 |
---|---|
author | Yadav, Vikas Sun, Sheng Heitman, Joseph |
author_facet | Yadav, Vikas Sun, Sheng Heitman, Joseph |
author_sort | Yadav, Vikas |
collection | PubMed |
description | Some remarkable animal species require an opposite-sex partner for their sexual development but discard the partner’s genome before gamete formation, generating hemi-clonal progeny in a process called hybridogenesis. Here, we discovered a similar phenomenon, termed pseudosexual reproduction, in a basidiomycete human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans, where exclusive uniparental inheritance of nuclear genetic material was observed during bisexual reproduction. Analysis of strains expressing fluorescent reporter proteins revealed instances where only one of the parental nuclei was present in the terminal sporulating basidium. Whole-genome sequencing revealed that the nuclear genome of the progeny was identical with one or the other parental genome. Pseudosexual reproduction was also detected in natural isolate crosses where it resulted in mainly MATα progeny, a bias observed in Cryptococcus ecological distribution as well. The mitochondria in these progeny were inherited from the MATa parent, resulting in nuclear-mitochondrial genome exchange. The meiotic recombinase Dmc1 was found to be critical for pseudosexual reproduction. These findings reveal a novel, and potentially ecologically significant, mode of eukaryotic microbial reproduction that shares features with hybridogenesis in animals. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8412948 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84129482021-09-09 Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi Yadav, Vikas Sun, Sheng Heitman, Joseph eLife Genetics and Genomics Some remarkable animal species require an opposite-sex partner for their sexual development but discard the partner’s genome before gamete formation, generating hemi-clonal progeny in a process called hybridogenesis. Here, we discovered a similar phenomenon, termed pseudosexual reproduction, in a basidiomycete human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans, where exclusive uniparental inheritance of nuclear genetic material was observed during bisexual reproduction. Analysis of strains expressing fluorescent reporter proteins revealed instances where only one of the parental nuclei was present in the terminal sporulating basidium. Whole-genome sequencing revealed that the nuclear genome of the progeny was identical with one or the other parental genome. Pseudosexual reproduction was also detected in natural isolate crosses where it resulted in mainly MATα progeny, a bias observed in Cryptococcus ecological distribution as well. The mitochondria in these progeny were inherited from the MATa parent, resulting in nuclear-mitochondrial genome exchange. The meiotic recombinase Dmc1 was found to be critical for pseudosexual reproduction. These findings reveal a novel, and potentially ecologically significant, mode of eukaryotic microbial reproduction that shares features with hybridogenesis in animals. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021-08-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8412948/ /pubmed/34338631 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66234 Text en © 2021, Yadav et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Genetics and Genomics Yadav, Vikas Sun, Sheng Heitman, Joseph Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title | Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title_full | Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title_fullStr | Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title_full_unstemmed | Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title_short | Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
title_sort | uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi |
topic | Genetics and Genomics |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8412948/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34338631 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66234 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT yadavvikas uniparentalnuclearinheritancefollowingbisexualmatinginfungi AT sunsheng uniparentalnuclearinheritancefollowingbisexualmatinginfungi AT heitmanjoseph uniparentalnuclearinheritancefollowingbisexualmatinginfungi |