Journal
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 35, Issue 6, Pages 1338-1347Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msy078
Keywords
bacteria; horizontal gene transfer; species definition; selection; recombination; demography
Funding
- CNRS
- Institut Pasteur
Ask authors/readers for more resources
I detail four major open problems in microbial population genetics with direct implications to the study of molecular evolution: the lack of neutral polymorphism, the modeling of promiscuous genetic exchanges, the genetics of ill-defined populations, and the difficulty of untangling selection and demography in the light of these issues. Together with the historical focus on the study of single nucleotide polymorphism and widespread non-random sampling, these problems limit our understanding of the genetic variation in bacterial populations and their adaptive effects. I argue that we need novel theoretical approaches accounting for pervasive selection and strong genetic linkage to better understand microbial evolution.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available