Matthew Hartfield : Adaptation and Self–Fertilisation

Special Seminar

  • Datum: 26.07.2018
  • Uhrzeit: 11:00 - 12:00
  • Vortragende(r): Matthew Hartfield
  • University of Aarhus, Denmark
  • Ort: MPIPZ
  • Raum: SR II
  • Gastgeber: Stefan Laurent
 Matthew Hartfield : Adaptation and Self–Fertilisation


Many organisms are hermaphrodites that are capable of self-fertilisation, where individuals produce both male and female sex cells that can fertilise one another. The degree of self-fertilisation affects the fixation of adaptive mutations; for example, selfers are more likely to fix recessive mutations than outcrossing organisms. Yet the effects of linked mutations on adaptive alleles, and the genetic footprint that beneficial mutations leave in genome sequences data obtained from self-fertilisation organisms, remain understudied topics. I will first discuss models on how the spread of beneficial mutations affect the fixation of other linked selected alleles. Higher self-fertilisation rates increase the probability that linked deleterious alleles will fix alongside beneficial mutations, due to the resulting reduction in polymorphism and effective recombination. When considering a distribution of deleterious alleles, it is found that beneficial alleles generally need to be more recessive than the previously assumed dominance threshold (h < 1/2) for selfing to be beneficial from single-locus theory. If recurrent adaptive mutation arises at a target site, then intermediate selfing rates maximize the fixation probability of linked recessive beneficial mutations. I will end by presenting results on the genetic footprint of adaptive mutations for different levels of dominance and self-fertilisation.


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