Detecting selection-induced departures from Hardy-Weinberg proportions.
Viability selection influences the genotypic contexts of alleles and leads to quantifiable departures from Hardy-Weinberg proportions. One measure of these departures is Wright's inbreeding coefficient (F), where observed heterozygosity is compared with expected heterozygosity. Here, I extend population genetics theory to describe post-selection genotype frequencies in terms of post-selection allele frequencies and fitness dominance. The resulting equations correspond to non-equilibrium populations, allowing the following questions to be addressed: When selection is present, how large a sample size is needed to detect significant departures from Hardy-Weinberg? How do selection-induced departures from Hardy-Weinberg vary with allele frequencies and levels of fitness dominance? For realistic selection coefficients, large sample sizes are required and departures from Hardy-Weinberg proportions are small.
Lachance
Joseph
J
Graduate Program in Genetics, Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5222, USA. Joseph.Lachance@sunysb.edu
D005787:Gene Frequency; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005838:Genotype; D007178:Inbreeding; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012641:Selection, Genetic