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Sexual reproduction is the most common life cycle in multicellular eukaryotes, such as animals, fungi and plants. [6] [7] Sexual reproduction also occurs in some unicellular eukaryotes. [2] [8] Sexual reproduction does not occur in prokaryotes, unicellular organisms without cell nuclei, such as bacteria and archaea.
It is a mechanism of horizontal gene transfer as are transformation and transduction although these two other mechanisms do not involve cell-to-cell contact. [4] Classical E. coli bacterial conjugation is often regarded as the bacterial equivalent of sexual reproduction or mating, since it involves the
Another theory is that sexual reproduction originated from selfish parasitic genetic elements that exchange genetic material (that is: copies of their own genome) for their transmission and propagation. In some organisms, sexual reproduction has been shown to enhance the spread of parasitic genetic elements (e.g. yeast, filamentous fungi). [79]
Bacteria grow to a fixed size and then reproduce through binary fission, a form of asexual reproduction. [114] Under optimal conditions, bacteria can grow and divide extremely rapidly, and some bacterial populations can double as quickly as every 17 minutes. [ 115 ]
Meiosis is a key event of the sexual cycle in eukaryotes. It is the stage of the life cycle when a cell gives rise to haploid cells each having half as many chromosomes as the parental cell. Two such haploid gametes, ordinarily arising from different individual organisms, fuse by the process of fertilization, thus completing the sexual cycle.
Bacterial conjugation is often regarded as the bacterial equivalent of sexual reproduction or mating since it involves the exchange of genetic material. During conjugation the donor cell provides a conjugative or mobilizable genetic element that is most often a plasmid or transposon.[4][5] Most conjugative plasmids have systems ensuring that ...
Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. There are two forms of reproduction: asexual and sexual. In asexual reproduction, an organism can reproduce without the involvement of another organism.
Furthermore, bacteria can reproduce in as little as 20 minutes, [11] which allows for fast adaptation, meaning new strains of bacteria can evolve quickly. This has become an issue regarding antibiotic resistant bacteria. [citation needed] Thermophile bacteria from deep-sea vent. This organism eats sulfur and hydrogen and fixes its own carbon ...