Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In population genetics, fixation is the change in a gene pool from a situation where there exists at least two variants of a particular gene in a given population to a situation where only one of the alleles remains. That is, the allele becomes fixed. [1]
These random fluctuations within the allele frequencies can lead to the fixation or loss of certain alleles within a population. To the right is an image that shows through successive generations; the allele frequencies fluctuate randomly within a population. The smaller the population size, the faster fixation or loss of alleles will occur.
This correlation is influenced by several evolutionary processes, such as genetic drift, founder effect, bottleneck, genetic hitchhiking, meiotic drive, mutation, gene flow, inbreeding, natural selection, or the Wahlund effect, but it was originally designed to measure the amount of allelic fixation owing to genetic drift.
Once an allele becomes fixed, genetic drift comes to a halt, and the allele frequency cannot change unless a new allele is introduced in the population via mutation or gene flow. Thus even while genetic drift is a random, directionless process, it acts to eliminate genetic variation over time.
The allele frequency spectrum can be written as the vector = (,,,,), where is the number of observed sites with derived allele frequency .In this example, the observed allele frequency spectrum is (,,,,), due to four instances of a single observed derived allele at a particular SNP loci, two instances of two derived alleles, and so on.
A selective sweep can occur when a rare or previously non-existing allele that increases the fitness of the carrier (relative to other members of the population) increases rapidly in frequency due to natural selection. As the prevalence of such a beneficial allele increases, genetic variants that happen to be present on the genomic background ...
The fixation index (F ST) is a measure of population differentiation due to genetic structure. It is frequently estimated from genetic polymorphism data, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) or microsatellites. Developed as a special case of Wright's F-statistics, it is one of the most commonly used statistics in population genetics ...
The top graph shows the time to fixation for a population size of 10 and the bottom graph shows the time to fixation for a population of 100 individuals. As population decreases time to fixation for alleles increases. Conservationists are often worried about a loss of genetic variation in small populations. There are two types of genetic ...