Genome Duplication Is a Radical Evolutionary Gamble

N o larger than the head of a match, Potamopyrgus antipodarum doesn’t look very impressive.

Potamopyrgus antipodarum 的大小不及火柴头大，看起来并不令人印象深刻。

Few people visiting New Zealand’s Lake Alexandrina even notice the tiny gastropods littering the shores.

很少有人游览新西兰亚历山大湖时会注意到岸边散落着的微小腹足动物。

The snail’s diminutive size, however, conceals a massive secret.

然而，蜗牛的微小体型却隐藏着一个巨大的秘密。

Sometime in the recent past, its genome doubled.

在不久前的某个时候，它的基因组增加了一倍。

Instead of having two sets of chromosomes and two copies of every gene, the way most animals do, it has three or four — significantly more genetic material than it ought to have.

它不像大多数动物那样拥有两组染色体和每个基因的两个副本，而是拥有三到四个——比应有的遗传物质多得多。

“We actually don’t know, for our snails or any other species, why this happens so reliably, again and again and again,” said the evolutionary biologist Maurine Neiman , who studies the species at the University of Iowa.

“我们实际上不知道，对于我们的蜗牛或任何其他物种来说，为什么这种情况会如此可靠地发生，一次又一次，”爱荷华大学研究该物种的进化生物学家毛林·内曼（Maurine Neiman）说。

Scientists suspect that an organism inheriting three, four, or more sets of chromosomes instead of two (a condition called polyploidy) is, in most cases, a fatal error of cell division.

科学家怀疑，在大多数情况下，继承三组、四组或更多组染色体而不是两组染色体（称为多倍体）的生物体是细胞分裂的致命错误。

Only a tiny fraction of whole-genome duplication events are thought to stabilize in a lineage.

只有一小部分全基因组复制事件被认为在谱系中稳定。

But those that do can have significant consequences.

但那些这样做可能会产生重大后果。

You wouldn’t be able to guess, but these snails have three or four sets of chromosomes in their cells, instead of the standard two.

你无法猜测，但这些蜗牛的细胞中有三组或四组染色体，而不是标准的两组。

“We like to think of it as a baseball hitter that strikes out a lot, but when they do hit, it’s a home run,” said Douglas Soltis, a plant evolutionary geneticist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

佛罗里达自然历史博物馆的植物进化遗传学家道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯说：“我们喜欢把它想象成一个经常三振的棒球击球手，但当他们真的击中时，那就是一个本垒打。”

“Polyploidy is the most important process on the planet that hardly anybody knows anything about.”

“多倍体是地球上最重要的过程，几乎没有人知道。”

Advances in whole-genome sequencing are changing that.

全基因组测序的进步正在改变这一现状。

Studies across the tree of life are finding that genome duplication isn’t exactly an infrequent occurrence.

对生命之树的研究发现，基因组复制并不罕见。

Among plants, it’s hard to avoid, said Jonathan Wendel , an evolutionary biologist at Iowa State University: All seed plants living today have experienced at least one ancient whole-genome duplication, and many have undergone more.

爱荷华州立大学进化生物学家乔纳森·温德尔（Jonathan Wendel）表示，在植物中，这种情况很难避免：当今生活的所有种子植物都至少经历过一次古代全基因组复制，而且许多经历了更多次。

Barnacles , insects , trout , and arachnids carry evidence of ancient duplications in their genomes.

藤壶、昆虫、鳟鱼和蛛形纲动物的基因组中都带有古代重复的证据。

Biologists hotly debate whether the significant evolutionary changes that led to jawed vertebrates, from hagfish to humans, are connected by ancient gene duplications hundreds of millions of years ago.

生物学家们热烈争论导致有颌脊椎动物（从盲鳗到人类）的重大进化变化是否与数亿年前的古代基因复制有关。

The evolutionary biologist Maurine Neiman uncovered a whole-genome duplication in a minuscule snail.

进化生物学家莫林·内曼（Maurine Neiman）在一只微小的蜗牛中发现了全基因组重复。

“We actually don’t know, for our snails or any other species, why this happens so reliably, again and again and again,” she said.

“我们实际上不知道，对于我们的蜗牛或任何其他物种来说，为什么这种情况会如此可靠地发生，一次又一次，”她说。

Like gene inversions and translocations or single-nucleotide point mutations, a whole-genome duplication is a type of genetic mutation that fuels evolutionary change.

与基因倒位、易位或单核苷酸点突变一样，全基因组重复是一种促进进化变化的基因突变。

In fact, genome doubling is the single most radical mutation an organism can experience in a single generation.

事实上，基因组加倍是生物体在一代人中可能经历的最根本的突变。

Researchers are analyzing the whole genomes of diverse species to find out how organisms manage not only to survive such a potentially lethal event, but also to thrive and adapt in its wake.

研究人员正在分析不同物种的整个基因组，以了解生物体如何不仅能够在这种可能致命的事件中生存下来，而且还能在事件发生后茁壮成长和适应。

“All these different interrogative tools have opened up this world to us that we could not see and hence did not know existed,” Wendel said.

“所有这些不同的疑问工具向我们展示了这个我们看不到、因此不知道存在的世界，”温德尔说。

A story of how this process unfolds is being written in potamo’s genome.

关于这一过程如何展开的故事正在被写入波塔莫的基因组中。

Neiman’s team dated the snail’s genome duplication to less than a million years ago — incredibly recent in evolutionary terms, but long enough ago for the species to have begun the longer process of adjusting to its heavier genomic load.

内曼的团队将蜗牛的基因组复制追溯到不到一百万年前——从进化角度来看，这是令人难以置信的新近，但对于该物种来说，已经足够早了，以适应其较重的基因组负荷，已经开始了更长的过程。

That recency is giving Neiman a close view of how potamo has managed its polyploid existence.

这种新近的经历让内曼得以近距离了解马铃薯如何管理其多倍体的存在。

This is the latest evidence amid a growing awareness of polyploidy that is shifting science’s understanding of genome duplication’s evolutionary importance.

这是人们对多倍体认识不断增强的最新证据，多倍体正在改变科学界对基因组复制的进化重要性的理解。

The serene shores of Lake Alexandrina are about as far from the Las Vegas strip as you can get, but that didn’t stop potamos from taking one of evolution’s biggest gambles.

亚历山大湖宁静的湖岸距离拉斯维加斯大道几乎是最远的地方，但这并没有阻止波塔莫进行进化史上最大的赌博之一。

Until the advent of widespread DNA sequencing, polyploidy remained largely shrouded in mystery.

在广泛的 DNA 测序出现之前，多倍体在很大程度上仍然笼罩在神秘之中。

Scientists knew that it happened: It was obvious to anyone in the habit of counting chromosomes under a microscope.

科学家们知道这件事发生了：对于任何习惯在显微镜下计算染色体的人来说，这是显而易见的。

But it wasn’t until researchers could analyze genomes, base pair by base pair, that they began to appreciate the full implications of whole-genome duplication.

但直到研究人员能够逐个碱基对地分析基因组时，他们才开始认识到全基因组复制的全部含义。

Analyzing base pairs is how the evolutionary biologist Kenneth Wolfe at University College Dublin became interested in polyploidy.

都柏林大学学院的进化生物学家肯尼思·沃尔夫 (Kenneth Wolfe) 正是通过分析碱基对对多倍体产生了兴趣。

When he started his lab in the early 1990s, he took advantage of a European Union initiative that would pay scientists 2 euros per nucleotide to sequence the genome of baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae .

当他在 20 世纪 90 年代初建立自己的实验室时，他利用了欧盟的一项倡议，该倡议将向科学家支付每个核苷酸 2 欧元的费用，以对面包酵母（酿酒酵母）的基因组进行测序。

( In 2022 , sequencing cost roughly $0.000000006 per nucleotide in U.S. dollars.) Wolfe wasn’t especially interested in yeast, but his lab needed the money.

（2022 年，每个核苷酸的测序成本约为 0.000000006 美元。）沃尔夫对酵母并不是特别感兴趣，但他的实验室需要这笔钱。

Later, when he and other researchers with the Saccharomyces Genome Sequencing Project started sharing their results, they noticed something interesting.

后来，当他和酵母基因组测序项目的其他研究人员开始分享他们的结果时，他们注意到了一些有趣的事情。

Ancient genome duplication led to the radiation of the brassica genus, including broccoli, kale, and cauliflower, and the evolution of the tomato’s colorful, fleshy fruit.

古代基因组复制导致了包括西兰花、羽衣甘蓝和花椰菜在内的芸苔属植物的辐射，以及番茄色彩缤纷的肉质果实的进化。

Polyploidy explains why grocery strawberries are so big (they’re octoploids) and why some watermelons are seedless (they’re triploid and sterile).

多倍体解释了为什么杂货草莓如此大（它们是八倍体）以及为什么一些西瓜是无籽的（它们是三倍体且不育）。

“There just seemed to be an awful lot of duplicated genes in these genomes,” he recalled.

“这些基因组中似乎存在大量重复基因，”他回忆道。

As the genome project reached completion, Wolfe and his team found that yeast DNA was full of doubled regions.

随着基因组计划的完成，沃尔夫和他的团队发现酵母 DNA 充满了双重区域。

The duplicated segments were around 60% identical, and regions of closely related DNA were separated by far longer stretches of unique genes.

重复的片段大约有 60% 相同，并且密切相关的 DNA 区域被更长的独特基因片段分开。

“You could really see the history of what had happened,” he said.

“你真的可以看到所发生的事情的历史，”他说。

“You could track every gene and see what happened to it.”

“你可以追踪每个基因，看看它发生了什么。”

Wolfe suspected that he was seeing evidence of a past genome duplication event alongside indications that the cells were in the process of pruning back excess DNA.

沃尔夫怀疑他看到了过去基因组复制事件的证据，同时也有迹象表明细胞正在修剪多余的 DNA。

Wolfe’s 1997 Nature paper on the subject helped turn increasing attention to both polyploidy and the inverse process, rediploidization, in which an organism retains some of its doubled genes and discards others, ultimately bringing the genome back to a streamlined diploid state.

沃尔夫 1997 年在《自然》杂志上发表的关于该主题的论文帮助人们越来越多地关注多倍体和逆过程，即重新二倍体化，在这种过程中，生物体保留了一些双倍基因并丢弃了其他基因，最终使基因组恢复到精简的二倍体状态。

As the complete genome sequences of other model organisms began trickling in, Wolfe used his bioinformatics expertise to look for genome duplications there.

随着其他模式生物的完整基因组序列开始逐渐流入，沃尔夫利用他的生物信息学专业知识来寻找那里的基因组重复。

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans was devoid of polyploidy.

线虫秀丽隐杆线虫缺乏多倍体。

So, too, was the fruit fly.

果蝇也是如此。

Perhaps, Wolfe mused, what he saw in yeast was a fluke.

沃尔夫沉思道，也许他在酵母中看到的只是侥幸。

Then, in 2000, the genome of the model plant Arabidopsis was published.

随后，2000 年，模式植物拟南芥的基因组发表。

“There was a genome duplication in there screaming at us,” he said.

“那里有一个基因组重复在向我们尖叫，”他说。

“And it wasn’t just my lab — several labs discovered this genome duplication.”

“不仅仅是我的实验室——几个实验室都发现了这种基因组重复。”

Past biologists had theorized about the evolutionary benefit of doubled genes.

过去的生物学家已经对双基因的进化益处提出了理论。

In 1970, the Japanese American geneticist Susumu Ohno had published Evolution by Gene Duplication , which posited that the duplication of individual genes was an underappreciated source of evolutionary novelty.

1970年，日裔美国遗传学家大野进（Susumu Ohno）发表了《基因复制的进化》（Evolution by Gene Duplication），其中指出个体基因的复制是进化新颖性的一个未被充分认识的来源。

A doubling event on its own can result in novel traits.

倍增事件本身就可以产生新的特征。

Plus, with two copies of each gene, evolution can tinker with one version while keeping the other as a backup; a new function could emerge without a gene losing its existing use.

另外，由于每个基因都有两个副本，进化可以修改一个版本，同时保留另一个版本作为备份；一种新的功能可以在基因不失去其现有用途的情况下出现。

The same could potentially be true if the entire genome was doubled.

如果整个基因组加倍，同样的情况也可能成立。

In his treatise, Ohno hypothesized that all vertebrate genomes contained evidence of an ancient genome duplication event.

大野在他的论文中假设所有脊椎动物基因组都包含古代基因组复制事件的证据。

Subsequent genome sequencing has shown this to be the case.

随后的基因组测序表明情况确实如此。

“You might think that the genome, the blueprint of life, would be a stable thing,” said Sarah Otto , an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia.

“你可能认为基因组，生命的蓝图，将是一个稳定的东西，”不列颠哥伦比亚大学的进化生物学家莎拉·奥托说。

“It’s not.

“不是的。

It’s all over the map.”

地图上到处都是。”

The challenge for biologists studying polyploidy was that the cellular shock of sudden genome doubling is often lethal.

研究多倍体的生物学家面临的挑战是基因组突然加倍对细胞的冲击通常是致命的。

Even offspring that survive are usually sterile and have no way of passing on the extra DNA.

即使存活下来的后代通常也是不育的，无法传递多余的 DNA。

To find out how a polyploidy event could be survivable, they would need input from plant biologists, who had myriad opportunities to watch it unfold.

为了找出多倍体事件如何能够生存，他们需要植物生物学家的意见，而植物生物学家有无数的机会观察它的展开。

Several decades ago, in the dry prairies of eastern Washington, Pamela Soltis and Douglas Soltis began tracking a polyploidy event.

几十年前，在华盛顿东部干燥的大草原上，帕梅拉·索尔蒂斯和道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯开始追踪多倍体事件。

They knew almost exactly when it had happened: Several species of a plant known as goatsbeard were brought to the United States from Europe in the mid-1920s.

他们几乎准确地知道事情发生的时间：20 世纪 20 年代中期，几种被称为山羊胡的植物从欧洲被带到美国。

They hybridized, and before long, two new species emerged with 24 chromosomes — twice as many as the original species.

它们杂交，不久之后，出现了两个拥有 24 条染色体的新物种——是原始物种的两倍。

By growing the plants from seed and studying their genomes, the Soltises could see what happens to cells in the immediate aftermath of genome duplication.

通过从种子中培育植物并研究它们的基因组，索尔蒂斯夫妇可以看到基因组复制后细胞发生了什么。

What they found was chaos.

他们发现的是一片混乱。

Almost as soon as the goatsbeard acquired the extra DNA, the plants started to tinker with their surplus of genes — changing some genes, getting rid of others, keeping a few, Douglas Soltis said.

道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯说，几乎一旦山羊胡获得了额外的 DNA，植物就开始修补它们多余的基因——改变一些基因，去除其他基因，保留一些基因。

“Immediately, in one generation, they’re already beginning to get rid of certain copies of genes [and] not expressing certain genes as much as other genes.”

“在一代人的时间里，他们已经开始消除某些基因拷贝，并且不再像其他基因那样表达某些基因。”

The married plant biologists Pamela and Doug Soltis have tracked a recent genome duplication in lab experiments.

已婚植物生物学家帕梅拉和道格·索尔蒂斯在实验室实验中追踪了最近的基因组重复。

“You can watch evolution repeat itself,” Doug said.

“你可以看到进化重演，”道格说。

Billions of years of evolution have optimized many eukaryotic cells , including those of plants and animals, for diploid genomes, where a cell carries two copies of each chromosome (one from the mother, one from the father).

数十亿年的进化已经优化了许多真核细胞，包括植物和动物的细胞，以获得二倍体基因组，其中细胞携带每条染色体的两个副本（一个来自母亲，一个来自父亲）。

When an offspring is born with a duplicated genome, the cell is transformed by all the extra genetic material.

当后代出生时具有重复的基因组，细胞就会被所有额外的遗传物质转化。

It’s the single biggest, most radical mutation that naturally occurs, according to the evolutionary biologist Kyle T.

进化生物学家 Kyle T. 表示，这是自然发生的最大、最根本的突变。

David , who has a joint appointment at Vanderbilt University and Cornell University.

大卫 (David)，在范德比尔特大学和康奈尔大学联合任职。

“It’s like instant speciation with one generation,” he said.

“这就像一代人的即时物种形成，”他说。

To create space for so much additional DNA, the nucleus enlarges.

为了给如此多的额外DNA创造空间，细胞核会增大。

The cell synthesizes many more proteins from the additional gene sequences.

细胞从额外的基因序列合成更多的蛋白质。

And in some cases the process of synthesizing those proteins seems to take longer.

在某些情况下，合成这些蛋白质的过程似乎需要更长的时间。

Scientists don’t know why some species seem to adapt well to these changes, while for others polyploidy is a dead end.

科学家们不知道为什么有些物种似乎能够很好地适应这些变化，而对于另一些物种来说，多倍体却是一条死胡同。

It’s like instant speciation with one generation.

这就像一代人的即时物种形成。

Kyle T.

凯尔·T。

David, Vanderbilt University

大卫，范德比尔特大学

“Things go wrong a lot of times, and it goes wrong in a lot of different species,” Otto said.

“很多时候事情都会出错，而且很多不同的物种都会出错，”奥托说。

“It is thought that there are polyploid humans produced, but they [spontaneously] abort early.”

“人们认为，人类产生了多倍体，但他们[自发地]提前流产。”

Whether human or goatsbeard, the cell immediately begins performing triage.

无论是人类还是山羊胡子，细胞都会立即开始进行分类。

Genes are retained, tossed out, turned off, and modified.

基因被保留、丢弃、关闭和修改。

After their decades observing goatsbeard adapting to polyploidy in the lab, the Soltises can even predict which genes are most likely to get the boot and which are more likely to stick around.

经过数十年在实验室中观察山羊胡子适应多倍体的过程，索尔蒂斯夫妇甚至可以预测哪些基因最有可能被淘汰，哪些基因更有可能留下来。

“It’s amazing not only how fast it is, but that it’s repeatable,” Douglas Soltis said.

“令人惊奇的不仅是它的速度有多快，而且它是可重复的，”道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯说。

“You can watch evolution repeat itself.” He speculates that there may be rules underlying genome doubling, though he admits they are still figuring out exactly what those rules might be.

“你可以看到进化重演。”他推测基因组加倍背后可能存在规则，尽管他承认他们仍在弄清楚这些规则到底是什么。

What seems to stack the deck in favor of surviving whole-genome duplication, David said, is environmental shifts.

大卫说，环境变化似乎是有利于全基因组复制幸存的因素。

And not small perturbations, either: Some researchers have noticed a pattern in which full-scale apocalyptic cataclysms, such as the asteroid collision that heralded the end of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, occur around the same time as clusters of genome duplications.

而且也不是小扰动：一些研究人员注意到了一种模式，在这种模式中，全面的世界末日灾难（例如 6600 万年前预示着恐龙灭绝的小行星碰撞）与基因组复制簇几乎同时发生。

“With the severe environmental changes going on, you need a similar leap in your genome,” David said.

“随着环境发生严重变化，你的基因组也需要类似的飞跃，”大卫说。

“It just increases the chances that you’re going to get that really rare combination of duplicated gene families that can acquire new functions and can help under those traumatic environmental conditions.” However, a 2026 paper on the subject has proved controversial; a formal rebuttal claims that the analysis is flawed.

“它只会增加获得真正罕见的重复基因家族组合的机会，这些组合可以获得新的功能，并且可以在那些创伤性的环境条件下提供帮助。”然而，2026 年一篇关于该主题的论文却引起了争议。正式反驳声称该分析有缺陷。

Two new species of polyploid goatsbeard have developed in eastern Washington within the past century.

上个世纪，华盛顿州东部出现了两种新的多倍体山羊胡物种。

Courtesy of Pamela and Douglas Soltis

由帕梅拉和道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯提供

As researchers begin to make headway on understanding the rare conditions that allow polyploids to propagate, other scientists are turning their attention to how duplicated genomes adapt to the sudden shock.

随着研究人员开始在了解多倍体繁殖的罕见条件方面取得进展，其他科学家正在将注意力转向复制的基因组如何适应突然的冲击。

When Neiman first traveled to New Zealand as an undergraduate on a study abroad program in the late 1990s, she couldn’t have predicted that research on the evolution of sex would eventually bring her back.

20 世纪 90 年代末，当内曼作为一名本科生第一次前往新西兰参加海外留学项目时，她无法预料到性别进化的研究最终会让她回来。

On the shores of Lake Alexandrina, an alpine lake nestled among the craggy peaks of New Zealand’s South Island, most Potamopyrgus antipodarum snails reproduce sexually — the classic egg-meets-sperm.

亚历山大湖是新西兰南岛崎岖山峰间的一个高山湖泊，在其岸边，大多数眼子螺进行有性繁殖——经典的卵子与精子的结合。

Some females, however, reproduce asexually by making clones of themselves.

然而，一些雌性通过克隆自己来进行无性繁殖。

Neiman wanted to know why.

内曼想知道原因。

Except for the way they reproduce, the two types of snails are almost identical.

除了繁殖方式不同外，这两种蜗牛几乎完全相同。

Neiman figured that there must be some genetic difference between them.

内曼认为他们之间一定存在一些基因差异。

When her lab began piecing together the genomes of 30 different sexually reproducing potamo species , they stumbled upon something odd.

当她的实验室开始拼凑 30 种不同的有性生殖马铃薯物种的基因组时，他们偶然发现了一些奇怪的东西。

While many of the genes they sequenced had two copies, one maternal and one paternal, as expected, others had three, even four.

正如预期的那样，他们测序的许多基因都有两个拷贝，一个是母本的，一个是父本的，但其他基因则有三个，甚至四个。

Polyploidy is the most important process on the planet that hardly anybody knows anything about.

多倍体是地球上最重要的过程，几乎没有人知道。

Douglas Soltis, Florida Museum of Natural History

道格拉斯·索尔蒂斯，佛罗里达自然历史博物馆

When several doctoral students combed through the sequencing results, there was only one way to explain why so many extra gene copies were scattered across the whole of the potamo genome.

当几位博士生梳理测序结果时，只有一种方法可以解释为什么这么多额外的基因拷贝分散在整个马铃薯基因组中。

Sometime in the last million or so years, the snail had undergone a whole-genome duplication.

在过去一百万年左右的某个时候，蜗牛经历了全基因组复制。

“The snails are hiding this secret in their genome,” Neiman said.

“蜗牛将这个秘密隐藏在它们的基因组中，”内曼说。

“No one expected that.”

“没有人预料到会这样。”

She knew about ancient polyploidy events.

她了解古代多倍体事件。

She also knew about more recent examples in plants.

她还了解最近的植物例子。

What she had found had occurred in a scientific Goldilocks zone: recent enough that the snail had yet to finish reorganizing its doubled genome, and long enough ago that the process was well underway.

她的发现发生在一个科学的金发姑娘区：距离蜗牛还没有完成重组其双倍基因组的时间足够近，而距离足够远，这个过程已经在顺利进行。

In that relatively short amount of evolutionary time, the snails had already lost 60% of their doubled genes.

在相对较短的进化时间内，蜗牛已经失去了 60% 的双倍基因。

“From the time everything’s doubled, the race is on, because mutation is happening everywhere,” Wendel said.

“从一切都翻倍的时候起，竞赛就开始了，因为突变无处不在，”温德尔说。

“A lot of that duplicated, redundant material is just mutagenized [mutated] and lost.” Neiman published her team’s findings in November 2025 in Genome Biology and Evolution .

“许多重复的、多余的材料只是被诱变并丢失了。” Neiman 于 2025 年 11 月在《基因组生物学与进化》上发表了她的团队的研究结果。

Neiman speculates that polyploidy and the snail’s unusual reproductive strategies are related.

内曼推测多倍体与蜗牛不寻常的繁殖策略有关。

The females that reproduce asexually are triploid or tetraploid, meaning they carry three or four copies of every chromosome instead of the usual two.

无性繁殖的雌性是三倍体或四倍体，这意味着它们每条染色体携带三到四个副本，而不是通常的两个。

It could be that it’s easier for the females to manage their extra DNA by using clonal reproduction, she said, rather than trying to organize those chromosomes to make eggs.

她说，对于雌性来说，通过克隆繁殖来管理多余的 DNA 可能更容易，而不是试图组织这些染色体来产生卵子。

Complete polyploidy in potamos is ephemeral, as it is in many species.

正如许多物种一样，马铃薯的完全多倍体是短暂的。

It’s costly.

这很昂贵。

Most duplicated genomes never stabilize.

大多数复制的基因组永远不会稳定。

Those that do begin shedding genes as evolution sorts through the redundancy.

随着进化对冗余进行排序，那些确实开始脱落基因的生物。

“Either you get a new job, or you get out of town,” Wendel said.

“要么你找到一份新工作，要么你就离开这座城市，”温德尔说。

“Most things are getting out of town.”

“大多数东西都离开了城镇。”

The long-term instability of doubled genomes has led some researchers to question whether polyploidy is as important in broad evolutionary terms as its prevalence might suggest.

双基因组的长期不稳定性让一些研究人员质疑，从广泛的进化角度来看，多倍体是否像其流行所暗示的那样重要。

For example, Otto’s research has shown that, in yeast, having extra copies of every gene hinders the organism’s ability to adapt to the common antifungal medication nystatin.

例如，奥托的研究表明，在酵母中，每个基因的额外拷贝会阻碍生物体适应常见抗真菌药物制霉菌素的能力。

“Most polyploids really are dead ends,” she said.

“大多数多倍体确实是死胡同，”她说。

Potamopyrgus antipodarum sits at the heart of that tension between instability and innovation.

Potamopyrgus antipodarum 处于不稳定与创新之间紧张关系的核心。

The snail has survived the initial shock and is now negotiating the consequences of the gamble written into its DNA.

这只蜗牛在最初的震惊中幸存下来，现在正在与写入其 DNA 的赌博的后果进行谈判。

Only evolutionary time will tell whether its lineage will win big and use its expanded genome to find a new way to live.

只有进化时间才能告诉我们，它的谱系是否会赢得巨大胜利，并利用其扩展的基因组来寻找新的生活方式。

L ike many biologists who encounter genome duplication, Will Ratcliff found it accidentally.

就像许多遇到基因组重复的生物学家一样，威尔·拉特克利夫偶然发现了它。

The Georgia Tech biologist works with treelike clusters of genetically identical yeast cells that remain stuck together after cell division.

这位佐治亚理工学院的生物学家研究了基因相同的树状酵母细胞簇，这些细胞分裂后仍然粘在一起。

In 2018, he started growing these cells, called “snowflake yeast,” in a long-term experiment to study how multicellularity might have evolved.

2018 年，他开始在一项长期实验中培养这些被称为“雪花酵母”的细胞，以研究多细胞生物是如何进化的。

The cells started as diploids.

这些细胞最初是二倍体。

But soon, polyploid varieties developed in his lab.

但很快，他的实验室就开发出了多倍体品种。

That’s because polyploid cells tend to be bigger and more elongated, and he was selecting for larger clumps of cells.

这是因为多倍体细胞往往更大、更细长，而他选择的是更大的细胞团。

“There’s ecological rewards,” Ratcliff said.

“这是生态奖励，”拉特克利夫说。

“In some environments, it’s good to be bigger than the rest of the population.” As a plant, for instance, you can grow taller than your neighbors, get more sunlight, and extend your roots deeper.

“在某些环境中，比其他人更大是件好事。”例如，作为一株植物，你可以比邻居长得更高，获得更多阳光，并将根部延伸得更深。

It was the first time that polyploidy spontaneously arose and persisted in the lab, he said, and shows the role it might have played in some of life’s biggest leaps, such as the evolution of multicellularity.

他说，这是多倍体第一次在实验室中自发出现并持续存在，并显示了它在生命的一些最大飞跃中可能发挥的作用，例如多细胞的进化。

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《Quanta》杂志对评论进行审核，以促进知情、实质性、文明的对话。

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辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

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版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。