Muller's Ratchet and compensatory mutation in Caenorhabditis briggsae mitochondrial genome evolution.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The theory of Muller' Ratchet predicts that small asexual populations are doomed to accumulate ever-increasing deleterious mutation loads as a consequence of the magnified power of genetic drift and mutation that accompanies small population size. Evidence for Muller's Ratchet and knowledge on its underlying molecular mechanisms, however, are lacking for natural populations.

Results

We characterized mitochondrial genome evolutionary processes in Caenorhabditis briggsae natural isolates to show that numerous lineages experience a high incidence of nonsynonymous substitutions in protein-coding genes and accumulate unusual deleterious noncoding DNA stretches with associated heteroplasmic function-disrupting genome deletions. Isolate-specific deletion proportions corr

SUBMITTER: Howe DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2279117 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature