deleterious allele

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Mutation-selection balance can be efficient in explaining the process of gene substitution only if one of these deleterious alleles acquires a relatively high selective advantage.
Here we study the effect of population size on the inbreeding depression caused by mildly deleterious alleles.
We found that the model has low statistical power when inbreeding depression is caused by the build-up of mildly deleterious alleles.
This might obscure the putative difference in fixation rates of slightly deleterious alleles.
We allowed the population to reach equilibrium, with regard to the frequency of deleterious alleles, with a fixed selfing rate.
Mutation to deleterious alleles is, therefore, probably not the sole source of the variation that underlies inbreeding depression.
The problem with mutation-selection balance is in the fact that it is based on deleterious alleles at very low frequencies.
More deleterious alleles can be concealed in those populations with larger additive genetic variance in fitness.
This suggests that a possible overall contribution of dominance would cause positive rather than negative skewness, resulting from dominance of deleterious alleles.
The model's poor detection of inbreeding effects therefore seems to have limited the detection of purging of mildly deleterious alleles.
Alternatively, the difference may reflect rapid purging of deleterious alleles in the first few generations of laboratory rearing.
Purging of deleterious alleles can also occur in species with a long history of inbreeding.
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