ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2019
The importance of the Neutral Theory in 1968 and 50 years on: A response to Kern and Hahn 2018.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers.
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84 citing papers in PubMed.
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- How far can you go? Extrapolating values of catalytic activity from known protein landscapes in natural and directed evolution.Chemical Society reviews · 2026Review
- Inferring Patterns of Purifying, Positive, and Balancing Selection in the Coppery Titi Monkey (Plecturocebus cupreus) Utilizing a Well-Fit Evolutionary Baseline Model.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- A century of theories of balancing selection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Identifying Adaptive Footprints in the Presence of Demographic Uncertainty.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Factors controlling protein evolvability-at the molecular scale.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2026Article
- Near Neutral Selectionist Theories (NNST) for SARS-CoV-2 suggested by the substitution-mutation ratio (c/µ) analysis.PloS one · 2026Article
- A new perspective on population genetics: Deciphering the relationship between genetic variants and disease prevalence in Psoriasis.PloS one · 2026Article
- Chloroplast genome comparison of Valeriana species with sequence variation, selective pressure, and divergence analysis.PloS one · 2026Article
- Adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy results in seemingly neutral molecular evolution.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Recent Insights Into the Evolutionary Genomics of the Critically Endangered Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis).American journal of primatology · 2025Review
- Urban Life Shapes Genetic Diversity in the Green Anole, Anolis carolinensis.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Inferring demographic and selective histories from population genomic data using a 2-step approach in species with coding-sparse genomes: an application to human data.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Parallel and convergent evolution in genes underlying seasonal migration.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Estimating the proportion of beneficial mutations that are not adaptive in mammals.PLoS genetics · 2024Article
- Inferring demographic and selective histories from population genomic data using a two-step approach in species with coding-sparse genomes: an application to human data.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Genetic diversity of the major cat allergen, Fel d 1.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
A recent article reassessing the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution claims that it is no longer as important as is widely believed. The authors argue that "the neutral theory was supported by unreliable theoretical and empirical evidence from the beginning, and that in light of modern, genome-scale data, we can firmly reject its universality." Claiming that "the neutral theory has been overwhelmingly rejected," they propose instead that natural selection is the major force shaping both between-species divergence and within-species variation. Although this is probably a minority view, it is important to evaluate such claims carefully in the context of current knowledge, as inaccuracies can sometimes morph into an accepted narrative for those not familiar with the underlying science. We here critically examine and ultimately reject Kern and Hahn's arguments and assessment, and instead propose that it is now abundantly clear that the foundational ideas presented five decades ago by Kimura and Ohta are indeed correct.
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