Special Issue "The World Created by the Sex of Microbes: Exploring the Essence of Species Diversity"

Dear Colleagues,

We will consider the entire topic of microbial sex in this Issue. The function of sex is to introduce genetic diversity in offspring genomes. The diversity that arises in offspring genomes can be thought of as an organism's multiple proposals to natural selection. Sex includes the mechanism of sex type determination, inheritance patterns from parents to offspring, the ability of gametes to discriminate between sexes, and the creation of genetic diversity in offspring populations. Protists are a group of single-celled organisms that are members of all seven major eukaryotic supergroups. The seven major supergroups have classification criteria based on cellular ultrastructural and genomic structural features, and protists share these criteria with multicellular organisms. On the other hand, protist diversity is evident in its morphology, genome organization, and biological function.

Species-specific phenomena such as gamete sex recognition and interspecific mating inhibition have been reported. It turns out that the sex-determining mechanisms established for each protist species represent a diverse world. We aim to deepen our understanding of the diversity of sexual functions in the evolutionary process of individual species and the conservation of sexual functions common to protists by adopting a bird's-eye view of these characteristics of protists.

Prof. Dr. Nobuyuki Haga
Guest Editor

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• mating type determination
• mating-type inheritance
• mating type substances and genes
• mating pheromones
• genomic DNA rearrangement
• meiosis and gamete genesis