Description

The self-fertile hermaphrodite worm C. elegans is an important model organism for biology, yet little is known about the origin and persistence of the self-fertilizing mode of reproduction in this lineage. Recent work has demonstrated an extraordinary degree of selfing combined with a high deleterious mutation rate in contemporary populations. These observations raise the question as to whether the mutation load might rise to such a degree as to eventually threaten the species with extinction. The potential for such a process to occur would inform our understanding of the time since the origin of self-fertilization in C. elegans history.

Laurence Loewe and Asher D Cutter
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK

Center for Systems Biology Edinburgh, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JU, UK

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 1L2, Canada

Laurence.Loewe@evolutiona ry-research.net
acutter@eeb.utoronto.ca

Published: 30 April 2008
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2008, 8:125 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-1 25
Received: 30 October 2007
Accepted: 30 April 2008
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-21...
© 2008 Loewe and Cutter; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
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