How A Seven-Sexed Organism Gets It On
Tetrahymena thermophila Wikimedia CommonsScience solves a mystery that's more than 50 years old. The specifics of how a single-celled organism called Tetrahymena thermophila gets it on has been a scientific mystery for more than 50 years. See, T. thermophila has seven sexes, and it can reproduce in 21 combinations. For sexy-time, each T. thermophila can mate with another T. thermophila that has any of the six other sexes. But with so many options, how do cells determine which sex their progeny will be? New research published this week in PLOS Biology by biologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The J. Craig Venter Institute uncovers the mechanism behind the mystery. It has nothing whatsoever to do with with the sex of the parent cells. The progeny cell's sex is basically chosen at random. The organism has two different nuclei: a germline...