Do Gametes Woo? Evidence for Their Nonrandom Union at Fertilization.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental tenet of inheritance in sexually reproducing organisms such as humans and laboratory mice is that gametes combine randomly at fertilization, thereby ensuring a balanced and statistically predictable representation of inherited variants in each generation. This principle is encapsulated in Mendel's First Law. But exceptions are known. With transmission ratio distortion, particular alleles are preferentially transmitted to offspring. Preferential transmission usually occurs in one sex but not both, and is not known to require interactions between gametes at fertilization. A reanalysis of our published work in mice and of data in other published reports revealed instances where any of 12 mutant genes biases fertilization, with either too many or too few heterozygotes and homozyg

SUBMITTER: Nadeau JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5629312 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature