ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Quantitative system drift.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Chromosome-specific drift under stabilizing selection generates polygenic barriers to sex chromosome turnover.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We consider a biological system composed of multiple genetically variable components, the combined result of which is a quantitative trait under stabilizing selection for an optimal value. We show mathematically that, while the mean value of the system is ultimately constrained to remain near its optimum, the mean contributions of individual components are free to drift far from their initial values. Each component's drift, though qualitatively identical to neutral drift, is slower by a factor that depends on the fraction of the system's genetic variance contributed by the component. We further show that symmetric mutation between alleles that increase and decrease components' contributions to the system imposes a weak long-term brake on components' drift. Our results provide a population-genetic basis for "system drift," the concept that individual components of a biological system can evolve despite selective constraint on their combined product. A special case is a single polygenic trait under stabilizing selection, where our results predict that the mean contributions to the trait of different subregions of the genome, such as the chromosomes, can drift despite constraint on the genome-wide value. To indicate the broad applicability of our results, we explore their implications for the evolution of gene expression, selection against interspecific hybrids, selection against turnovers of sex-determining systems, and the division of labor in mutualisms.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.