The role of advantageous mutations in enhancing the evolution of a recombination modifier.
Although the evolution of recombination is still a major problem in evolutionary genetics, recent theoretical studies have shown that recombination can evolve by breaking down interference ("Hill-Robertson effects") among multiple loci. This leads to selection on a recombination modifier in a population subject to recurrent deleterious mutation. Here, we use computer simulations to investigate the evolution of a recombination modifier under three different scenarios of recurrent mutation in a finite population: (1) mutations are deleterious only, (2) mutations are advantageous only, and (3) there is a mixture of deleterious and advantageous mutations. We also investigate how linkage disequilibrium, the strength of selection acting on a modifier, and effective population size change under the different scenarios. We observe that adding even a small number of advantageous mutations increases the fixation rate of modifiers that increase recombination, especially if the effects of deleterious mutations are weak. However, the strength of selection on a modifier is less than the summed strengths had there been deleterious mutations only and advantageous mutations only.
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. m.hartfield@sms.ed.ac.uk
Matthew
M
Hartfield
Sarah P
SP
Otto
Peter D
PD
Keightley
D003198:Computer Simulation; D004058:Diffusion; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D056426:Genetic Loci / Q000235:genetics; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics; D023281:Genomics; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium / Q000235:genetics; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009154:Mutation; D011336:Probability; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012641:Selection, Genetic