Sheltering of deleterious mutations explains the stepwise extension of recombination suppression on sex chromosomes and other supergenes.

ABSTRACT: Many organisms have sex chromosomes with large nonrecombining regions that have expanded stepwise, generating "evolutionary strata" of differentiation. The reasons for this remain poorly understood, but the principal hypotheses proposed to date are based on antagonistic selection due to differences between sexes. However, it has proved difficult to obtain empirical evidence of a role for sexually antagonistic selection in extending recombination suppression, and antagonistic selection has been shown to be unlikely to account for the evolutionary strata observed on fungal mating-type chromosomes. We show here, by mathematical modeling and stochastic simulation, that recombination suppression on sex chromosomes and around supergenes can expand under a wide range of parameter values simply be

SUBMITTER: Jay P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9295944 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature