Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T12:45:22.404Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Population size and protein variation in man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

John Haigh
Affiliation:
Mathematics Division, University of Sussex
John Maynard Smith
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The ‘neutral mutation theory’ holds that most amino acid substitutions in evolution are selectively neutral. The known pattern of variation in human haemoglobins can only be made consistent with this theory if the human species has passed through a bottleneck of numbers in the recent past. If this theory is true, estimates of the necessary size and duration of this bottleneck can be made. A theory is developed which leads to an estimate of Yg, n, the number of alleles present in a population which arise between g and n generations ago, and hence to the estimate

where u is the neutral mutation rate and Ne the effective population size, for the probability that a population contains no such alleles. Using data on haemoglobins, this gives an approximate upper limit to the time elapsed since the bottleneck in human numbers. Either such a bottleneck occurred, or the neutral mutation theory is false; data on other proteins will enable a choice between these possibilities to be made.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

References

REFERENCES

Doolittle, R. F., Chen, R., Glasgow, C., Mross, G. & Weinstein, M. (1970). The molecular constancy of fibrino peptides A and B from 125 individual humans. Humangenetik 10, 1529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewens, W. J. (1969). Population Genetics. Methuen Monograph.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feller, W. (1966). An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, vol. 1, 3rd ed.Wiley.Google Scholar
Harris, H. (1970). The Principles of Human Biochemical Genetics. North-Holland Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Harris, T. E. (1963). The Theory of Branching Processes. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, M. (1964). Diffusion models in population genetics. Journal of Applied Probability 1, 177232.Google Scholar
Kimura, I. (1968 a). Evolutionary rate at the molecular level. Nature 217, 624626.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimura, M. (1968 b). Genetic variability maintained in a finite population due to mutational production of neutral and nearly neutral isoalleles. Genetical Research 11, 247269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimura, M. (1969). The rate of molecular evolution considered from the standpoint of population genetics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 63, 11811188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimura, M. & Crow, J. F. (1964). The number of alleles that can be maintained in a finite population. Genetics 49, 725738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, J. L. & Jukes, T. H. (1969). Non-Darwinian evolution. Science 164, 788789.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lotka, A. J. (1931). The extinction of families. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 21, 377.Google Scholar
Maynard-Smith, J. (1970). Population size, polymorphism and the rate of non-Darwinian evolution. American Naturalist 104, 231237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, A. C., Sutton, H. E. & Riggs, A. (1966). A chemical difference between human transferrins B2 and C. American Journal of Human Genetics 18, 454458.Google ScholarPubMed
Wright, S. (1969). Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, vol. 2. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar