Alexey KondrashovWhen researchers looked at the DNA of a human population, the mutation rate taught them something about the evolutionary value of sex
Shocking news for the Natural Selection fundamentalists:
FOR A SPECIES whose numbers show no signs of collapsing, humans have a shockingly high mutation rate. Each of us is born with about 70 new genetic errors that our parents did not have. That’s much more than a slime mould, say, or a bacterium. Mutations are likely to decrease an organism’s fitness, and an avalanche like this every generation could be deadly to our species. The fact that we haven’t gone extinct suggests that over the long term, we have some way of taking out our genetic garbage. And a new paper, recently published in Science, provides evidence that the answer may be linked to another fascinating procedure: sex. - in Alexey Kondrashov – What if Sex Is Just a Garbage Dump for Genetic Mutations?
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