Role of pheromone recognition systems in creating new species of fission yeast
Authors:Taisuke Seike1 and Chikashi Shimoda2
1 Genetics Strains Research Center, National Institute of Genetics, Shizuoka, Japan.
2 Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan.
Keywords:
pheromone, fission yeast, G-protein coupled receptor, reproductive isolation, speciation, diversification, coevolution.
Related Article(s)?
Seike T, Shimoda C, Niki H (2019). Asymmetric diversification of mating pheromones in fission yeast. PLoS Biol 17(1): e3000101. , 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000101
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
We declare no competing financial interests.
Please cite this article as:
Taisuke Seike and Chikashi Shimoda (2019). Role of pheromone recognition systems in creating new species of fission yeast. Microbial Cell 6(4): 209-211. doi: 10.15698/mic2019.04.675
© 2019 Seike and Shimoda. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Many species, from mammals to microorganisms, release sex pheromones to attract a potential partner of the opposite sex. The combination of a pheromone and its corresponding receptor determines the species-specific ability of males and females to recognize each other, and therefore causes reproductive isolation. This barrier, which has arisen to restrict gene flow between mating pairs, might facilitate reproductive isolation leading to incipient speciation, but how do new combinations of pheromone and receptor evolve? Our recent study demonstrated an “asymmetric” pheromone recognition system in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe: among the two pheromone/receptor pairs in this yeast, recognition between one pair is stringent, while that between the other pair is rather relaxed. We speculate that the asymmetric properties of these pheromone recognition systems are beneficial for gradual evolution resulting in reproductive isolation in yeasts.
doi: 10.15698/mic2019.04.675
Volume 6, pp. 209 to 211, published 11/03/2019.