All-female lizard species created in the lab

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All-female lizard species created in the lab

All-female lizard species created in the lab


Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed.


“It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It relates to the question of how these unisexual species arise in the first place.”


Female-only species that reproduce by cloning themselves—a process called parthenogenesis, in which embryos develop without fertilization—were once considered dead-end evolutionary flukes. But in the last decade, unisexuality has been found in more than 80 groups of fish, amphibian and reptiles. It might not be such a dead end after all.


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Lees verder: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/0...tm_campaign=rss


Bron: Ars Technica

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