Coevolution and Adaptation of Transition Nuclear Proteins and Protamines in Naturally Ascrotal Mammals Support the Black Queen Hypothesis
Simin Chai, Jieqiong Kang, Tianzhen Wu, Yu Zheng, Xu Zhou, Shixia Xu, Wenhua Ren, Guang Yang · 2024
Read Coevolution and Adaptation of Transition Nuclear Proteins and Protamines in Naturally Ascrotal Mammals Support the Black Queen Hypothesis by Simin Chai, Jieqiong Kang, Tianzhen Wu, Yu Zheng, Xu Zhou, Shixia Xu, Wenhua Ren, Guang Yang (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11652718.txt.
Description
Simin Chai and co-authors published this evolution study in 2024 on sperm proteins in mammals whose testes stay inside the body. In most mammals the testes hang outside, and when they fail to drop, sperm suffer. Whales and kin break that rule: their testes stay in, yet their sperm are sound. The team tracked two sperm protein families that pack DNA in the sperm head.
Gene layout stayed shared across mammals, but several inner-testes lines had jointly lost two of the genes. In whales, the surviving proteins picked up the slack: one bound DNA more stably in heat, the other repaired DNA better. The authors read this as a Black Queen pattern, where losing a gene pays when partners cover its work. The swap may explain how such lines kept sperm sound in a warm body.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Simin Chai, Jieqiong Kang, Tianzhen Wu, Yu Zheng, Xu Zhou, Shixia Xu, Wenhua Ren, Guang Yang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 44 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |