{"id":270635,"date":"2017-04-06T15:57:48","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=270635"},"modified":"2020-10-26T23:18:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T03:18:34","slug":"sawfish-is-first-vertebrate-known-to-clone-itself-in-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/sawfish-is-first-vertebrate-known-to-clone-itself-in-the-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Sawfish is first vertebrate known to clone itself in the wild"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Sorry cloning opponents: cloning is very, very natural\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

No males? No problem.\u00a0Smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata)\u00a0native to rivers in south-west Florida, appear to have given birth without sex \u2013 essentially cloning themselves.<\/p>\n

The sawfish\u00a0\u2013 a type of ray that grows up to 7 metres long \u2013 is a\u00a0critically endangered\u00a0species. Because of this, the females may turn to parthenogenesis \u2013 reproduction without fertilisation from a male \u2013 as a last resort to produce offspring and avoid extinction, says a team led by\u00a0Andrew Fields\u00a0of Stony Brook University in New York.<\/p>\n

Plenty of plants and invertebrates reproduce this way. And several captive vertebrate species including sharks, birds and reptiles have been shown to clone themselves in captivity. But this sawfish is the first vertebrate known to do it successfully in the wild.<\/p>\n

Wild snakes have been seen gestating parthenogenetic young, but it\u2019s unknown if they would ever have produced viable offspring.<\/p>\n

The researchers analysed telltale markers called\u00a0microsatellites\u00a0in 190 sawfish that reveal how related their parents are. In seven fish, the markers suggested their parents were identical to them. The analysis revealed that the seven fish came from three different mothers.<\/p>\n

Getting back together
\n\u201cThe statistics say they\u2019re extremely unlikely to have a father,\u201d says Fields.<\/p>\n

Parthenogenesis is thought to happen when an egg is fertilised by another of the animal\u2019s cells called a polar body, says Fields.\u00a0Polar bodies\u00a0are small cells created and usually discarded when an egg is formed, with the egg receiving half the chromosomes and the polar body the other half.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we don\u2019t know what causes a female to reproduce parthenogenetically,\u201d says Warren Booth of the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. In captive bird species, however, it seems to be a heritable trait, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if a female resulted from in-breeding, she might carry forward the mutations that cause her to reproduce parthenogenetically,\u201d says Booth. \u201cAs such, when populations become small, the rate of in-breeding increases and this raises the likelihood that these genetic conditions will become evident.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn27636-sawfish-is-first-vertebrate-known-to-clone-itself-in-the-wild\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Sorry cloning opponents: cloning is very, very natural\u2026  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":281080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}