Pollution-tolerant allele in fingernail clams (Musculium transversum)

For nearly 50 years, the fingernail clam (Musculium transversum) was believed to be virtually eliminated from the Illinois River. In 1991, workers began finding substantial populations of M. transversum in the Illinois River including several beds in and around the highly polluted Chicago Sanitary District. In order to determine if populations of M. transversum from polluted sites exhibited any genetic response to the high levels of toxins and to examine the genetic structure of several populations of M. transversum for any changes due to the population crash, starch-gel electrophoresis was performed on M. transversum from three Illinois River localities and four Mississippi River basin locations. The sampled populations produced an inbreeding coefficient (FIS) of 0.929, indicating that the populations were highly inbred. The results of a suspected founder effect due to a bottleneck was suggested by an FST = 0.442. The isozyme Glucose-6-phosphate isomerase-2 (Gpi-2) produced allelic frequency patterns that were consistent with expected patterns of a pollution-tolerant allele. Polluted sites exhibited elevated frequencies of Gpi-2(100) whereas nonpolluted sites exhibited elevated frequencies of Gpi-2(74). This frequency pattern suggested that natural selection was occurring in populations under severe toxic pressures, leading to an increase in the frequency of the allele Gpi-2(100). Therefore, Gpi-2(100) is a possible pollution-tolerant mutation in M. transversum.