The hitch-hiking effect of a favourable gene

TLDR

Selective gene substitution alters frequencies at linked loci, reducing heterozygosity of neutral polymorphisms in a distance‑dependent manner and affecting long‑term maintenance of linked polymorphisms only if fixation occurs. The authors estimate the aggregate hitch‑hiking effect on neutral polymorphism, showing it dominates random fixation in populations of size ≥10⁴–10⁶. The results demonstrate that hitch‑hiking reduces neutral polymorphism more than random fixation, accounting for the modest variation of polymorphism across population sizes, and that in large populations a selective substitution can occur without fixing a linked polymorphism when recombination is low.

Abstract

Summary When a selectively favourable gene substitution occurs in a population, changes in gene frequencies will occur at closely linked loci. In the case of a neutral polymorphism, average heterozygosity will be reduced to an extent which varies with distance from the substituted locus. The aggregate effect of substitution on neutral polymorphism is estimated; in populations of total size 10 6 or more (and perhaps of 10 4 or more), this effect will be more important than that of random fixation. This may explain why the extent of polymorphism in natural populations does not vary as much as one would expect from a consideration of the equilibrium between mutation and random fixation in populations of different sizes. For a selectively maintained polymorphism at a linked locus, this process will only be important in the long run if it leads to complete fixation. If the selective coefficients at the linked locus are small compared to those at the substituted locus, it is shown that the probability of complete fixation at the linked locus is approximately exp (− Nc ), where c is the recombinant fraction and N the population size. It follows that in a large population a selective substitution can occur in a cistron without eliminating a selectively maintained polymorphism in the same cistron.