Non-Neutral Evolution: Theories and Molecular Data

✍ Scribed by John H. Gillespie (auth.), Brian Golding (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 260
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

All organisms--from the AIDS virus, to bacteria, to fish, to humans--must evolve to survive. Despite the central place of evolution within biology, there are many things that are still poorly understood. For Charles Darwin, the driving force behind all evolution was natural selection. More recently, evolutionary biologists have considered that many mutations are essentially neutral with respect to natural selection. Many questions remain. Are molecular differences between species adaptive? Are differences within species adaptive? Modern biotechnology has enabled us to identify precisely the actual DNA structure from many individuals within a population, and thus to see how these DNA sequences have changed over time and to answer some of these questions. At the same time, this knowledge poses new challenges to our ability to understand the observed patterns. This exciting volume outlines the biological problems, provides new perspectives on theoretical treatments of the consequences of natural selection, examines the consequences of molecular data, and relates molecular events to speciation. Every evolutionary biologist will find it of interest.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Alternatives to the Neutral Theory....Pages 1-17
Patterns of Polymorphism and Between Species Divergence in the Enzymes of Central Metabolism....Pages 18-28
Molecular Population Genetics in Drosophila Pseudoobscura : Three Future Directions....Pages 29-45
Selection, Recombination, and DNA Polymorphism in Drosophila ....Pages 46-56
Effects of Genetic Recombination and Population Subdivision on Nucleotide Sequence Variation in Drosophila ananassae ....Pages 57-66
Polymorphism and Divergence in Regions of Low Recombination in Drosophila ....Pages 67-76
Inferring Selection and Mutation from DNA Sequences: The McDonald-Kreitman Test Revisited....Pages 77-87
Detecting Natural Selection by Comparing Geographic Variation in Protein and DNA Polymorphisms....Pages 88-100
A Neutrality Test for Continuous Characters Based on Levels of Intraspecific Variation and Interspecific Divergence....Pages 101-111
Estimation of Population Parameters and Detection of Natural Selection from DNA Sequences....Pages 112-125
Using Maximum Likelihood to Infer Selection from Phylogenies....Pages 126-139
Gene Trees with Background Selection....Pages 140-153
Phylogenetic Analysis on the Edge: The Application of Cladistic Techniques at the Population Level....Pages 154-174
The Divergence of Halophilic Superoxide Dismutase Gene Sequences: Molecular Adaptation to High Salt Environments....Pages 175-187
Mitochondrial Haplotype Frequencies in Oysters: Neutral Alternatives to Selection Models....Pages 188-198
Gene Duplication, Gene Conversion and Codon Bias....Pages 199-207
Genealogical Portraits of Speciation in the Drosophila melanogaster Species Complex....Pages 208-216
Genetic Divergence, Reproductive Isolation and Speciation....Pages 217-232
Polymorphism at Mhc Loci and Isolation by the Immune System in Vertebrates....Pages 233-246
Back Matter....Pages 247-249

✦ Subjects

Ecology; Evolutionary Biology; Human Genetics; Zoology