Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 13 October 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5490, pp. 331 - 333
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5490.331
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Deleterious Mutations and the Evolution of Sex

Peter D. Keightley,1 Adam Eyre-Walker2

It has been suggested that sexual reproduction is maintained because it reduces the load imposed by recurrent deleterious mutations. If rates of deleterious mutation per diploid genome per generation (U) exceed 1, and mutations interact synergistically, then sexuals can overcome their inherent twofold disadvantage. We have tested this hypothesis by estimating genomic point mutation rates for protein-coding genes in a range of animal taxa. We find a positive linear relationship between U and generation time. In species with short generation times, U is predicted to be far below 1, suggesting that sex is not maintained by its capacity to purge the genome of deleterious mutations.

1 Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
2 Centre for the Study of Evolution and School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK.
E-mail: p.keightley{at}ed.ac.uk (P.D.K.) and a.c.eyre-walker{at}sussex.ac.uk (A.E.-W.)

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Molecular Spectrum of Spontaneous de Novo Mutations in Male and Female Germline Cells of Drosophila melanogaster.
Y. Watanabe, A. Takahashi, M. Itoh, and T. Takano-Shimizu (2009)
Genetics 181, 1035-1043
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Nearly Neutrality and the Evolution of Codon Usage Bias in Eukaryotic Genomes.
S. Subramanian (2008)
Genetics 178, 2429-2432
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Mammalian Nonsynonymous Sites Are Not Overdispersed: Comparative Genomic Analysis of Index of Dispersion of Mammalian Proteins.
S.-H. Kim and S. V. Yi (2008)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 25, 634-642
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Synergistic Fitness Interactions and a High Frequency of Beneficial Changes Among Mutations Accumulated Under Relaxed Selection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
W. J. Dickinson (2008)
Genetics 178, 1571-1578
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Life-history traits drive the evolutionary rates of mammalian coding and noncoding genomic elements.
S. I. Nikolaev, J. I. Montoya-Burgos, K. Popadin, L. Parand, E. H. Margulies, National Institutes of Health Intramural Sequencin, and S. E. Antonarakis (2007)
PNAS 104, 20443-20448
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Mutational Interference and the Progression of Muller's Ratchet When Mutations Have a Broad Range of Deleterious Effects.
R. J. Soderberg and O. G. Berg (2007)
Genetics 177, 971-986
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Evidence for Inefficient Selection Against Deleterious Mutations in Cytochrome Oxidase I of Asexual Bdelloid Rotifers.
T. G. Barraclough, D. Fontaneto, C. Ricci, and E. A. Herniou (2007)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 24, 1952-1962
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Accumulation of Deleterious Mutations in Small Abiotic Populations of RNA.
S. J. Soll, C. D. Arenas, and N. Lehman (2007)
Genetics 175, 267-275
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Sexual selection and its effect on the fixation of an asexual clone.
M. Salathe (2006)
Biol Lett 2, 536-538
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Joint Evolution of Dispersal and Inbreeding Load.
F. Guillaume and N. Perrin (2006)
Genetics 173, 497-509
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Evidence for Purifying Selection Against Synonymous Mutations in Mammalian Exonic Splicing Enhancers.
J. L. Parmley, J. V. Chamary, and L. D. Hurst (2006)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 23, 301-309
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
The Origins of Eukaryotic Gene Structure.
M. Lynch (2006)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 23, 450-468
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Evolutionary constraints in conserved nongenic sequences of mammals.
P. D. Keightley, G. V. Kryukov, S. Sunyaev, D. L. Halligan, and D. J. Gaffney (2005)
Genome Res. 15, 1373-1378
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Genomic Mutation in Lines of Arabidopsis thaliana Exposed to Ultraviolet-B Radiation.
J. L. MacKenzie, F. E. Saade, Q. H. Le, T. E. Bureau, and D. J. Schoen (2005)
Genetics 171, 715-723
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Polygenic Mutation in Drosophila melanogaster: Mapping Spontaneous Mutations Affecting Sensory Bristle Number.
T. F. C. Mackay, R. F. Lyman, and F. Lawrence (2005)
Genetics 170, 1723-1735
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Theoretical models of selection and mutation on quantitative traits.
T. Johnson and N. Barton (2005)
Phil Trans R Soc B 360, 1411-1425
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Evolution of Recombination Due to Random Drift.
N. H. Barton and S. P. Otto (2005)
Genetics 169, 2353-2370
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Comparison of the chicken and turkey genomes reveals a higher rate of nucleotide divergence on microchromosomes than macrochromosomes.
E. Axelsson, M. T. Webster, N. G.C. Smith, D. W. Burt, and H. Ellegren (2005)
Genome Res. 15, 120-125
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Response to Comment on "The Origins of Genome Complexity".
M. Lynch and J. S. Conery (2004)
Science 306, 978b
   Full Text »    PDF »
Premeiotic Clusters of Mutation and the Cost of Natural Selection.
R. C. Woodruff, J. N. Thompson Jr., and S. Gu (2004)
J. Hered. 95, 277-283
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Estimates of the Genomic Mutation Rate for Detrimental Alleles in Drosophila melanogaster.
B. Charlesworth, H. Borthwick, C. Bartolome, and P. Pignatelli (2004)
Genetics 167, 815-826
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Similar Rates but Different Modes of Sequence Evolution in Introns and at Exonic Silent Sites in Rodents: Evidence for Selectively Driven Codon Usage.
J.-V. Chamary and L. D. Hurst (2004)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 21, 1014-1023
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
On the Rate and Linearity of Viability Declines in Drosophila Mutation-Accumulation Experiments: Genomic Mutation Rates and Synergistic Epistasis Revisited.
J. D. Fry (2004)
Genetics 166, 797-806
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Influence of Dominance, Leptokurtosis and Pleiotropy of Deleterious Mutations on Quantitative Genetic Variation at Mutation-Selection Balance.
X.-S. Zhang, J. Wang, and W. G. Hill (2004)
Genetics 166, 597-610
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Functional constraints and frequency of deleterious mutations in noncoding DNA of rodents.
P. D. Keightley and D. J. Gaffney (2003)
PNAS 100, 13402-13406
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Neutral Substitutions Occur at a Faster Rate in Exons Than in Noncoding DNA in Primate Genomes.
S. Subramanian and S. Kumar (2003)
Genome Res. 13, 838-844
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Selection at Linked Sites in the Partial Selfer Caenorhabditis elegans.
A. D. Cutter and B. A. Payseur (2003)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 20, 665-673
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
A Low Rate of Simultaneous Double-Nucleotide Mutations in Primates.
N. G. C. Smith, M. T. Webster, and H. Ellegren (2003)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 20, 47-53
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Changing Effective Population Size and the McDonald-Kreitman Test.
A. Eyre-Walker (2002)
Genetics 162, 2017-2024
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Quantifying the Slightly Deleterious Mutation Model of Molecular Evolution.
A. Eyre-Walker, P. D. Keightley, N. G. C. Smith, and D. Gaffney (2002)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 19, 2142-2149
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Hill-Robertson Interference is a Minor Determinant of Variations in Codon Bias Across Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans Genomes.
G. Marais and G. Piganeau (2002)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 19, 1399-1406
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Rates and Patterns of Molecular Evolution in Inbred and Outbred Arabidopsis.
S. I. Wright, B. Lauga, and D. Charlesworth (2002)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 19, 1407-1420
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Intron evolution as a population-genetic process.
M. Lynch (2002)
PNAS 99, 6118-6123
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Patterns of Genetic Variation at a Chromosome 4 Locus of Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans.
M. A. Jensen, B. Charlesworth, and M. Kreitman (2002)
Genetics 160, 493-507
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Nucleotide Substitution Rate Estimation in Enterobacteria: Approximate and Maximum-Likelihood Methods Lead to Similar Conclusions.
N. G. C. Smith and A. Eyre-Walker (2001)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 18, 2124-2126
   Full Text »    PDF »
Direct Estimate of the Mutation Rate and the Distribution of Fitness Effects in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
D. M. Wloch, K. Szafraniec, R. H. Borts, and R. Korona (2001)
Genetics 159, 441-452
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Recessive Mutations and the Maintenance of Sex in Structured Populations.
A. F. Agrawal and J. R. Chasnov (2001)
Genetics 158, 913-917
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Mutation rates in mammalian genomes.
S. Kumar and S. Subramanian (2002)
PNAS 99, 803-808
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)