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A coherent theory of neutral evolution was first proposed by Motoo Kimura in 1968 [9] and by King and Jukes independently in 1969. [10] Kimura initially focused on differences among species; King and Jukes focused on differences within species. Many molecular biologists and population geneticists also contributed to the development of the ...
The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is an influential monograph written in 1983 by Japanese evolutionary biologist Motoo Kimura.While the neutral theory of molecular evolution existed since his article in 1968, [1] Kimura felt the need to write a monograph with up-to-date information and evidences showing the importance of his theory in evolution.
The neutral theory of molecular evolution, proposed by Motoo Kimura in 1968, holds that at the molecular level most evolutionary changes and most of the variation within and between species is not caused by natural selection but by genetic drift of mutant alleles that are neutral.
Neutral mutation has become a part of the neutral theory of molecular evolution, proposed in the 1960s. This theory suggests that neutral mutations are responsible for a large portion of DNA sequence changes in a species. For example, bovine and human insulin, while differing in amino acid sequence are still able to perform the same function ...
Neutral evolution can therefore be visualised as a population diffusing from one set of sequence nodes, through the neutral network, to another cluster of sequence nodes. Since the majority of evolution is thought to be neutral, [ 14 ] [ 15 ] a large proportion of gene change is the movement though expansive neutral networks.
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
According to Ohta, however, the nearly neutral theory largely fell out of favor in the late 1980s, because of the mathematically simpler neutral theory for the widespread molecular systematics research that flourished after the advent of rapid DNA sequencing. As more detailed systematics studies started to compare the evolution of genome ...
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.