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Related Experiment Videos

A limited role for balancing selection.

Saurabh Asthana1, Steffen Schmidt, Shamil Sunyaev

  • 1Genetics Division, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Harvard Medical School New Research Building, 77 Ave Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Trends in Genetics : TIG
|February 1, 2005
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Balancing selection appears to play a minimal role in maintaining long-term genetic diversity between humans and chimpanzees. Our study indicates this evolutionary force has not significantly shaped human evolution over long timescales.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Population genetics
  • Genomics

Background:

  • Balancing selection is known to influence short-term genetic variation.
  • Its role in maintaining long-term polymorphisms across species remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the long-term impact of balancing selection on human evolution.
  • To assess its contribution to genetic diversity between humans and chimpanzees.

Main Methods:

  • Alignment of chimpanzee transcripts and ESTs to the chimpanzee genome assembly.
  • Identification of polymorphisms shared between chimpanzees and humans (using dbSNP).

Main Results:

  • Low or absent incidence of ancestral polymorphism detected.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Evidence suggests balancing selection has not been a major force in human evolution during the chimpanzee-human divergence period.

    • Conclusions:

    • Balancing selection is unlikely to be a primary driver of long-term genetic diversity in human evolution.
    • The evolutionary forces shaping human--chimpanzee divergence may differ from those acting on shorter timescales.