Genetic hitchhiking versus background selection: the controversy and its implications
- 27 April 2010
- journal article
- review article
- Published by The Royal Society in Philosophical Transactions B
- Vol. 365 (1544), 1245-1253
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0278
Abstract
The controversy on the relative importance of background selection (BGS; against deleterious mutations) and genetic hitchhiking (associated with positive directional selection) in explaining patterns of nucleotide variation in natural populations stimulated research activities for almost a decade. Despite efforts from many theorists and empiricists, fundamental questions are still open, in particular, for the population genetics of regions of reduced recombination. On the other hand, the development of the BGS and hitchhiking models and the long struggle to distinguish them, all of which seem to be a purely academic exercise, led to quite practical advances that are useful for the identification of genes involved in adaptation and domestication.Keywords
This publication has 95 references indexed in Scilit:
- The effects of deleterious mutations on evolution in non-recombining genomesTrends in Genetics, 2009
- An Approximate Bayesian Estimator Suggests Strong, Recurrent Selective Sweeps in DrosophilaPLoS Genetics, 2008
- A population genomic approach to map recent positive selection in model speciesMolecular Ecology, 2008
- Patterns of Polymorphism and Demographic History in Natural Populations of Arabidopsis lyrataPLOS ONE, 2008
- Evidence that strong positive selection drives neofunctionalization in the tandemly duplicated polyhomeotic genes in DrosophilaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Background Selection in Single Genes May Explain Patterns of Codon BiasGenetics, 2007
- Inferring the Demographic History and Rate of Adaptive Substitution in DrosophilaPLoS Genetics, 2006
- A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human GenomePLoS Biology, 2006
- Population History and Natural Selection Shape Patterns of Genetic Variation in 132 GenesPLoS Biology, 2004
- The Genome Sequence of Drosophila melanogasterScience, 2000