Evidence for Fisher's dominance theory: just a "special case"?

Dominance, its genetic basis and evolution has been at the heart of one of the most intense controversies in the history of genetics. For more than eighty years the existence of dominance modifiers, genetic elements controlling dominance-recessivity interactions, has been suggested as a theoretical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in genetics 2011, Vol.27, p.441-445
Main Authors: Billiard, S., Castric, Vincent
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Genetics
Life Sciences
Populations and Evolution
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Dominance, its genetic basis and evolution has been at the heart of one of the most intense controversies in the history of genetics. For more than eighty years the existence of dominance modifiers, genetic elements controlling dominance-recessivity interactions, has been suggested as a theoretical possibility, but the modifier elements themselves have remained elusive. A recent study of the self-incompatibility locus in flowering plants provided the first empirical evidence for such genetic elements: small non-coding RNAs that control dominance-recessivity by mediating methylation of the promoter of the recessive allele. Theory has shown that several biological situations are favorable for the evolution of dominance modifiers. We argue that the elucidation of this mechanism of dominance opens up new research avenues that could lead to uncovering dominance modifiers in other genetic systems, such as genes controlling Batesian and Mu¨ llerian mimicry or host-parasite interactions, thereby shedding light on the generality of the proposed mechanism.
ISSN:0168-9525
DOI:10.1016/j.tig.2011.06.005