Selection at Linked Sites Shapes Heritable Phenotypic Variation in C. elegans

Mutation generates the heritable variation that genetic drift and natural selection shape. In classical quantitative genetic models, drift is a function of the effective population size and acts uniformly across traits, whereas mutation and selection act trait-specifically. We identified thousands o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2010-10, Vol.330 (6002), p.372-376
Main Authors: Rockman, Matthew V, Skrovanek, Sonja S, Kruglyak, Leonid
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Alleles
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Biological evolution
Caenorhabditis elegans - genetics
Caenorhabditis elegans - physiology
Chromosome Mapping
Chromosomes
Chromosomes - genetics
Crosses, Genetic
Drift
Evolution, Molecular
Evolutionary genetics
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gene Expression
Genes
Genes, Helminth
Genetic mutation
Genetic Variation
Genetics
Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution
Genomics
Genotype & phenotype
Heredity
Loci
Logistic Models
Mathematical models
Models, Genetic
Mutation
Mutations
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Phenotype
Phenotypic traits
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Population Density
Quantitative genetics
Quantitative Trait Loci
Quantitative Trait, Heritable
Quantitative traits
Recombination, Genetic
Selection, Genetic
Strain
Worms
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Summary:Mutation generates the heritable variation that genetic drift and natural selection shape. In classical quantitative genetic models, drift is a function of the effective population size and acts uniformly across traits, whereas mutation and selection act trait-specifically. We identified thousands of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) influencing transcript abundance traits in a cross of two Caenorhabditis elegans strains; although trait-specific mutation and selection explained some of the observed pattern of QTL distribution, the pattern was better explained by trait-independent variation in the intensity of selection on linked sites. Our results suggest that traits in C. elegans exhibit different levels of variation less because of their own attributes than because of differences in the effective population sizes of the genomic regions harboring their underlying loci.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1194208