Why are hybrids sterile?
October 2012. Just how new species are established is still one of the most
central questions in biology. In an article in the leading scientific journal
Nature, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden describe how they mapped
the genomes of the European pied flycatcher and the collared flycatcher and
found that it is disparate chromosome structures rather than separate
adaptations in individual genes that underlies the separation of the species.
"We were surprised that such a large part of the genome was nearly identical in the two species," says Hans Ellegren, professor of evolutionary biology and director of the research team behind the new findings.
Interbreeding
The big question in species-differentiation research today involves the genetic background of how two evolutionary lines gradually come to diverge from each other and ultimately cannot produce fertile young. Horses and donkeys, for instance, can crossbreed and produce mules and hinnies, but something in the genome of the latter makes them infertile. There must therefore be DNA sequences from diverging evolutionary lines that are not compatible.
"We were surprised that such a large part of the genome was nearly identical in the two species," says Hans Ellegren, professor of evolutionary biology and director of the research team behind the new findings.
Interbreeding
The big question in species-differentiation research today involves the genetic background of how two evolutionary lines gradually come to diverge from each other and ultimately cannot produce fertile young. Horses and donkeys, for instance, can crossbreed and produce mules and hinnies, but something in the genome of the latter makes them infertile. There must therefore be DNA sequences from diverging evolutionary lines that are not compatible.
Genome sequence of flycatchers
Researchers at the Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, are now
presenting the genome sequence for the two flycatchers, which are the first
organisms apart from so-called model organisms, to have their genome sequenced.
They are also the first DNA sequences for a vertebrate to have been determined
entirely by Swedish researchers and at a Swedish laboratory.
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