Testing a hypothesis for the evolution of sex

An asexual set of primitive bacteria is simulated with a lit-string Penna model with a Fermi function for survival. A recent hypothesis by Jan, Stauffer, and Moseley on the evolution of sex from asexual cells as a strategy for trying to escape the effects of deleterious mutations is checked. This strategy is found to provide a successful scenario for the evolution of a stable macroscopic sexual population.Publisher's Versio