Abstract
The year 2008 marked the 150th anniversary of the debut of the concept of natural selection as a mechanism of adaptive evolution through the reading of papers by Darwin and Wallace to the Linnaean Society. It also marked the 100th anniversary of the enunciation of the principle defining the inertial state of populations from a genetic viewpoint through the independent publication of papers on the topic by G H Hardy and W Weinberg. In this series, we examine the significance of the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium as a basic model of population genetics that forms the foundation for evolutionary genetics. In Part 3 of this series, we begin to relax some of the assumptions of the basic model underlying the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, and analyse the situations where either mutation or migration occur in an otherwise ideal large population.
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More information on meiotic drive can be found in practically any standard textbook of introductory genetics, e.g., F A Griffiths et al, An Introduction to Genetic Analysis, 6th Ed. WH Freeman & Co., New York, 1996.
A detailed description of the different types of mutations, and the mechanisms by which they arise, can be found in practically any standard textbook of introductory genetics, e.g., Griffiths et al, A good summary can also be found in D L Hartl and A G Clark, Principles of Population Genetics, 2nd Ed. Sinauer, Sunderland, pp.97–109, 1989.
A good summary of the infinite alleles model of mutation, and some of its consequences/related issues can be found in D L Hartl and A G Clark, Principles of Population Genetics, 2nd Ed. Sinauer, Sunderland, pp.122–143 and 349–383, 1989. (A slightly more detailed and up-to-date treatment can be found in the 3rd Edition, Sinauer, Sunderland, pp.174–189 and 315–360, 1997). If you are deeply fascinated by this topic, and do not mind fairly elaborate mathematical treatments, you may want to read M Kimura, The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.
An introductory discussion of other models of migration can be found in D L Hartl and A G Clark, Principles of Population Genetics, 2nd Ed. Sinauer, Sunderland, pp.308–322, 1989. The treatment in the 3rd Edition, Sinauer, Sunderland, pp.189–198, 1997, is more cursory.
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Amitabh Joshi studies and teaches evolutionary genetics and population ecology at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. His current research interests are in life-history evolution and population dynamics. He also enjoys music (especially traditional qawwali in Braj, Farsi, Punjabi and Urdu), history, philosophy, and reading and writing poetry in Urdu, and English.
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Joshi, A. Hardy-weinberg equilibrium and the foundations of evolutionary genetics. Reson 16, 116–128 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-011-0019-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-011-0019-y