Competition between the sperm of a single male can increase the evolutionary rate of haploid expressed genes.

ABSTRACT: The population genetic behavior of mutations in sperm genes is theoretically investigated. We modeled the processes at two levels. One is the standard population genetic process, in which the population allele frequencies change generation by generation, depending on the difference in selective advantages. The other is the sperm competition during each genetic transmission from one generation to the next generation. For the sperm competition process, we formulate the situation where a huge number of sperm with alleles A and B, produced by a single heterozygous male, compete to fertilize a single egg. This "minimal model" demonstrates that a very slight difference in sperm performance amounts to quite a large difference between the alleles' winning probabilities. By incorporating this effec

SUBMITTER: Ezawa K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3697975 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature