Is the sexual reproduction of a Eukaryotic adaption to reduce the probability of passing on genomes that have lost genes to DNA break mis-repair? or Why the Pachytene Checkpoint?
I will present a new hypothesis for how sexual reproduction creates a filter which selectively culls genomes that have lost genes due to faulty repair of double-strand DNA breaks and favors transmission to the next generation of the intact parental genome. The same mechanism, reacting to specific accidental genome reorganizations, would be expected to initiate the partitioning of one species into two, and then to progressively drive adaptive speciation without requiring either separation of the incipient species, or a population bottleneck and genetic drift.