Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33225949›Full record

ArticleBiology direct2020

The power of randomization by sex in multilocus genetic evolution.

Liudmyla Vasylenko, Marcus W Feldman, Adi Livnat

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biology direct, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Liudmyla VasylenkoDepartment of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave, Haifa, 3498838, Israel.
Marcus W FeldmanDepartment of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, 94305-5020, CA, USA.
Adi LivnatDepartment of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave, Haifa, 3498838, Israel. alivnat@univ.haifa.ac.il.

Funding

Israel Science Foundation 1986/16
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMany hypotheses have been proposed for how sexual reproduction may facilitate an increase in the population mean fitness, such as the Fisher-Muller theory, Muller's ratchet and others. According to the recently proposed mixability theory, however, sexual recombination shifts the focus of natural selection away from favoring particular genetic combinations of high fitness towards favoring alleles that perform well across different genetic combinations. Mixability theory shows that, in finite populations, because sex essentially randomizes genetic combinations, if one allele performs better than another across the existing combinations of alleles, that allele will likely also perform better overall across a vast space of untested potential genotypes. However, this superiority has been established only for a single-locus diploid model.

resultsWe show that, in both haploids and diploids, the power of randomization by sex extends to the multilocus case, and becomes substantially stronger with increasing numbers of loci. In addition, we make an explicit comparison between the sexual and asexual cases, showing that sexual recombination is the cause of the randomization effect.

conclusionsThat the randomization effect applies to the multilocus case and becomes stronger with increasing numbers of loci suggests that it holds under realistic conditions. One may expect, therefore, that in nature the ability of an allele to perform well in interaction with existing genetic combinations is indicative of how well it will perform in a far larger space of potential combinations that have not yet materialized and been tested. Randomization plays a similar role in a statistical test, where it allows one to draw an inference from the outcome of the test in a small sample about its expected outcome in a larger space of possibilities-i.e., to generalize. Our results are relevant to recent theories examining evolution as a learning process. REVIEWERS: This article was reviewed by David Ardell and Brian Golding.

Indexed as

Evolution, MolecularReproductionSelection, GeneticSexModels, GeneticEpistasisInteraction-based evolutionMultilocus modelsRandomized algorithmsRandom samplingSex and recombination

Identifiers

PMID33225949
PMCPMC7682110

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.