ANGLING FOR BOTH FISH AND SCIENTIFIC INSIGHTS WITH OLD FRIENDS IN CORPUS CHRISTI: DIVERSIFIED GENETIC BET-HEDGING AND MORE.

Just before Thanksgiving, I had the fun of flying down to Corpus Christi and meeting my old friends and colleagues, Dr. Anthony G. Comuzzie , Executive Director of the Obesity Society, Dr. Robert Makowsky , Global Head of Biostatistics at Almac Group, and I am proud to say, a former Postdoctoral mentoree.

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We fished in the bay and caught-released no less than four different species, redfish, speckled trout, drum, ladyfish, and even threw in a small stingray for good measure.

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The weather was unpredictable. So, we hedged our bets and brought layers of clothes. In the end, it was so cold and rainy that the layers virtually never came off. But we had the option. And that is the essence of bet-hedging.

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The beauty of long fishing trips with good old friends is that there is also much time while waiting for the fish to strike, to pursue and exchange scientific ideas. I a topic I've been thinking about ?- genetic bet-hedging (see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4262161/). Bet-hedging can take the form of genetically diversified bet-hedging in which reproducing individuals diversify the genotypes of their offspring such that, though no offspring's genotype may be optimal for an expected environmental set of circumstances, risk is spread across the next generation (the brood) in a manner that protects the genetic investment of the parent, in some cases perhaps at the expense of some of the individuals in the brood.

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Not unlike a stock portfolio, such a strategy under unpredictable environmental variation (i.e., we don't know if it will be cold and rainy or warm and sunny), is akin to the conservative investment approach that people in retirement or approaching retirement age often utilize as opposed to a maximum expected but higher risk and variable investment strategy that a younger person further from retirement might use. How might such diversified genetic bet-hedging be induced, tested for, and what patterns might one expect?

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Tony has a background in anthropology in addition to population genetics. He reminded me of some of my earlier work involving assortative mating, and from there, we branched into discussions of non-random mate selection in general as related to genetically diversified bet-hedging (see: https://www.evolutionary-ecology.com/abstracts/v05/1483.html; https://academic.oup.com/evolut/article/70/1/62/6852139). The conversation meandered for days, and we realized there were many different forms of non-random mating that could complement genetically diversified bet-hedging achieved through segregation distortion in gametogenesis, through sperm competition, through selective differential survival of conceptuses by genotype, and perhaps other mechanisms still. In the domain of non-random mating, Tony reminded me that many marriages are still arranged or at minimum heavily influenced by the parents of the persons to be married (and presumably then reproduce) allowing the parent to engage in genetic diversification not only through the selection of their own mates, but through the selection of their offspring's mates. Doing so differentially aligns the interests (in terms of reproductive fitness) of the parents and their offspring. That is, genetically diversified bet-hedging achieved through diversifying the genomes of offspring within one's brood may pit the parent against the offspring to some extent and possibly also the parent against their co-parent of the opposite sex in a sexually reproducing species. Yet, when doing so at the level of non-random mating and mate selection at the level of the offspring, the interests of the maternal and paternal parents in the F0 generation seem aligned.

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Many ways to test these in many different species yielding many different expectations came to us. I welcome any thoughts any of you have about how this may play out in humans and the construction of robust models allowing predictions for testing different forms of diversified genetic bet-hedging across generations. Our reasoning suggests that such bet-hedging would be good. Yet, we recall that evolution is a tinkerer and not a designer. The fact that something would be good does not mean it has been selected for or exists.

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The fishing was great, the food at the local seafood restaurants in Tony's boyhood neighborhoods and stomping grounds was sumptuous, and above all, the friendship and camaraderie was uplifting.

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What do you think – Has or does genetic bet-hedging played an important role in human evolution?

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And, let us know when you are ready to join us for some dialogue and adventure!