Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 104, Issue 15, Pages 6266-6271Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607280104
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Funding
- NCRR NIH HHS [RR06555, P20-RR18754, P20 RR018754, R01 RR006555] Funding Source: Medline
- NIAID NIH HHS [R37 AI028433, R01 AI028433, AI28433] Funding Source: Medline
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The intricate adjustment of organisms to their environment demonstrates the effectiveness of natural selection. But Darwin himself recognized that certain biological features could limit this effectiveness, features that generally reduce the efficiency of natural selection or yield suboptimal adaptation. Genetic linkage is known to be one such feature, and here we show theoretically that it can introduce a more sinister flaw: when there is complete linkage between loci affecting fitness and loci affecting mutation rate, positive natural selection and recurrent mutation can drive mutation rates in an adapting population to intolerable levels. We discuss potential implications of this finding for the early establishment of recombination, the evolutionary fate of asexual populations, and immunological clearance of clonal pathogens.
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