UTA study: Asexual reproduction causes dangerous genetic mutations
A team led by biologists at The University of Texas at Arlington has published a study that supports the theory that species that reproduce asexually have more harmful genetic mutations than those that use sexual reproduction. Jose Maldonado, a UTA doctoral student in biology, is the lead author of the new paper, entitled “Parthenogenesis doubles the level of amino acid substitution in whiptail mitochondria.” It was published in May in Evolution, the flagship journal of evolutionary biology. Co-authors include TJ Firneno, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Denver who received his Ph.D. from UTA in 2020; Alexander Hall, product application specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific who received his Ph.D. from UTA in 2016; and Matt Fujita, UTA professor of biology, who is Maldonado’s faculty advisor and previously served in the same role for Firneno and Hall. Parthenogenesis is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which the growth and development of an embryo occur