Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:13:33.226Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Accumulation of mutations in sexual and asexual populations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

Pekka Pamilo ,
Masatoshi Nei  and
Wen-Hsiung Li
Pekka Pamilo
Affiliation:
Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, P.O. Box 20334, Houston, Texas 77225, U.S.A.
Masatoshi Nei
Affiliation:
Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, P.O. Box 20334, Houston, Texas 77225, U.S.A.
Wen-Hsiung Li
Affiliation:
Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, P.O. Box 20334, Houston, Texas 77225, U.S.A.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The accumulation of beneficial and harmful mutations in a genome is studied by using analytical methods as well as computer simulation for different modes of reproduction. The modes of reproduction examined are biparental (bisexual, hermaphroditic), uniparental (selfing, automictic, asexual) and mixed (partial selfing, mixture of hermaphroditism and parthenogenesis). It is shown that the rates of accumulation of both beneficial and harmful mutations with weak selection depend on the within-population variance of the number of mutant genes per genome. Analytical formulae for this variance are derived for neutral mutant genes for hermaphroditic, selfing and asexual populations; the neutral variance is largest in a selfing population and smallest in an asexual population. Directional selection reduces the population variance in most cases, whereas recombination partially restores the reduced variance. Therefore, biparental organisms accumulate beneficial mutations at the highest rate and harmful mutations at the lowest rate. Selfing organisms are intermediate between biparental and asexual organisms. Even a limited amount of outcrossing in largely selfing and parthenogenetic organisms markedly affects the accumulation rates. The accumulation of mutations is likely to affect the mean population fitness only in long-term evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Genetics Research , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 135 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

References

Asher, J. H. Jr (1970). Parthenogenesis and genetic variability. II. One-locus models for various diploid populations. Genetics 66, 369–391.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Atwood, K. C., Schneider, L. K. & Ryan, F. J. (1951). Selective mechanism in bacteria. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 16, 345–355.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bell, G. (1982). The Masterpiece of Nature. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, H., Byerly, H. C., Hopf, F. A. & Michod, R. E. (1985). Genetic damage, mutation, and the evolution of sex. Science 229, 1277–1281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crow, J. F. & Kimura, M. (1965). Evolution in sexual and asexual populations. American Naturalist 99, 439–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crow, J. F. & Kimura, M. (1970). An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Crow, J. F. & Simmons, M. J. (1983). The mutation load in Drosophila. In The Genetics and Biology of Drosophila, vol. 3c (ed. Ashburner, M., Carson, H. L. and Thompson, N. J. Jr), pp. 1–35. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ewens, W. J. (1979). Mathematical Population Genetics. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Felsenstein, J. (1974). The evolutionary advantage of recombination. Genetics 78, 737–756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Felsenstein, J. & Yokoyama, S. (1976). The evolutionary advantage of recombination. II. Individual selection for recombination. Genetics 83, 845–859.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, R. A. (1930). The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haigh, J. (1978). The accumulation of deleterious genes in a population – Muller's ratchet. Theoretical Population Biology 14, 251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, R. & Smith, J. Maynard (1979). Does Muller's ratchet work with selfing? Genetical Research 32, 289–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, W. G. & Robertson, A. (1966). The effect of linkage on limits to artificial selection. Genetical Research 8, 269–294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimura, M. & Maruyama, T. (1966). The mutational load with epistatic gene interactions in fitness. Genetics 54, 1337–1351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimura, M. & Ohta, T. (1971). Theoretical Aspects of Population Genetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Li, W.-H. (1980). Rate of silencing at duplicate loci: a theoretical study and interpretation of data from tetraploid fishes. Genetics 95, 237–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, W.-H. (1986). Models of nearly neutral mutations with particular implications for nonrandom usage of synonymous codons. Journal of Molecular Evolution. (In the Press.)Google Scholar
Lynch, M. (1984). Destabilizing hybridization, generalpurpose genotypes and geographic parthenogenesis. Quarterly Review of Biology 59, 257–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, M. & Gabriel, W. (1983). Phenotypic evolution and parthenogenesis. American Naturalist 122, 745–764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, J. Maynard (1978). The Evolution of Sex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muller, H. J. (1932). Some genetic aspects of sex. American Naturalist 8, 118–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muller, H. J. (1964). The relation of recombination to mutational advance. Mutation Research 1, 2–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nei, M. (1963). Effect of selection on the components of genetic variance. In Statistical Genetics and Plant Breeding, ed. Hanson, W. D. and Robinson, H. F., pp. 501–515. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Science–National Research Council.Google Scholar
Suomalainen, E. (1950). Parthenogenesis in animals. Advances in Genetics 3, 193–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Takahata, N. (1982). Sexual recombination under joint effects of mutation, selection and random sampling drift. Theoretical Population Biology 22, 258–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Takahata, N. & Slatkin, M. (1983). Evolutionary dynamics of extranuclear genes. Genetical Research 42, 257–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Templeton, A. (1982). The prophecies of parthenogenesis. In Evolution and Genetics of Life Histories, ed. Dingle, H. and Hegmann, J. P., pp. 75–102. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Templeton, A. (1983). Natural and experimental parthenogenesis. In The Genetics and Biology of Drosophila, vol. 3c, ed. Ashburner, M., Carson, H. L. and Thompson, N. J. Jr, pp. 343–398. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar