A non-genetic meiotic repair program inferred from spore survival values in fission yeast wild isolates: a clue for an epigenetic ratchet-like model of ageing?

What is the nature of the ageing process? What is the spore survival, that one would expect upon analysing a self-cross, in a wild fission yeast strain? Could this two research questions be, somehow, related? In this manuscript, I am describing some interesting observations obtained while studying fission yeast spore survival values upon genetic crosses. Early findings brought my attention into mainly studying self-crosses (intra-strain crosses in which any cell can be involved in by mating with a sibling cell). This study, yield some interesting findings. As a summary: 1) most fission yeast self-crosses do show low spore survival values; 2) clonally related strains show a high phenotypic variability in self-cross spore survival values; 3) differences in self-cross spore survival values can be detected when comparing zygotic and azygotic matings; 4) self-cross spore survival values are highly affected by environmental factors, mainly producing a reduction in the spore survival values; 5) self-cross spore survival values are "recovered" when cells are subjected to several rounds of meiotic divisions; 6) signs of correlation between spore survival and vegetative cell survival (prior to the entry into meiosis) have been observed in this study. All those observations, among others, are discussed as part of an epigenetic variability that exist in fission yeast populations. A cyclical behaviour, of this epigenetic variability it is proposed, defining an underlying ratchet-like epigenetic mechanisms acting in all cells. In this manuscript, I propose that this mechanism, is, indeed, the main cause of the ageing process.