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Digest: Untangling the influence of soft and hard selection in experimental populations—from environment to genomics *
Author(s) -
JiménezMena Belén,
Henriques Romina
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/evo.13548
Subject(s) - biology , selection (genetic algorithm) , evolutionary biology , genomics , positive selection , polymorphism (computer science) , balancing selection , computational biology , genetics , genetic variation , genome , machine learning , allele , gene , computer science
Gallet et al. (2018) studied the effect of two selection regimes on the maintenance of polymorphism in experimental populations. They took two strains of Escherichia coli , each resistant to a different antibiotic, evolved them in culture conditions representing “soft” or “hard” selective regimes, and measured polymorphism levels for three to five transfers. Their results supported theoretical predictions that only “soft” selection maintains polymorphism, highlighting the importance of experimental studies to understand maintenance of variation in nature.