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Updated: Aug 2, 2026

In Vivo Functional Study of Disease-associated Rare Human Variants Using Drosophila
Published on: August 20, 2019
Genomic effects of nucleotide substitutions in Drosophila simulans
Andrew D Kern1, Corbin D Jones, David J Begun
1Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA. adkerm@ucdavis.edu
Abstract:
Selective fixation of beneficial mutations reduces levels of linked, neutral variation. The magnitude of this "hitchhiking effect" is determined by the strength of selection and the recombination rate between selected and neutral sites. Thus, depending on the values of these parameters and the frequency with which directional selection occurs, the genomic scale over which directional selection reduces levels of linked variation may vary widely. Here we present a permutation-based analysis of nucleotide polymorphisms and fixations in Drosophila simulans. We show evidence of pervasive small-scale hitchhiking effects in this lineage. Furthermore, our results reveal that different types of fixations are associated with different levels of linked variation.
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