Polimorfisme nucleotídic i canvis adaptatius recents

Authors

  • Montserrat Aguadé i Porres

Abstract

Individuals of any species exhibit some characteristics that render them especially adapted to their biotic and abiotic environment. Natural selection is the driving force of new adaptations (positive or adaptive selection), and it is also responsible for the maintenance of existing adaptations (negative or purifying selection). Disentangling adaptive from non-adaptive changes constitutes an important and long standing question in evolutionary biology. The analysis of nucleotide variation in extant populations can contribute to the identification of genes and genomic regions that have suffered adaptive changes in their most recent evolutionary history. The fixation of an advantageous mutation affects the level and pattern of variation at sites closely linked to the target of selection. The recent action of natural selection can thus be inferred through the footprint left on linked nucleotide variation. Detecting target genes of recent positive selection constitutes the first, though very important, step toward understanding adaptation at the molecular level.

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Published

2009-04-22