October 13, 2021

12:00pm, PST 158 HH and Zoom

Kirk Lohmueller
UCLA, Dept of EEB

" Causes and Evolutionary Consequences of Recessive Deleterious Variation "

Many mutations that occur in genomes are deleterious, resulting in a decrease in reproductive fitness. In this talk, I will highlight our recent and ongoing work on deleterious variation in natural populations, with a specific emphasis on recessive deleterious variation. First, I will describe how we estimate both fitness effects and dominance effects of new mutations by combining genetic variation data from outcrossing and selfing species of Arabidopsis, and develop a new model for the evolution of dominance. Second, I will present our ongoing work to assess the validity of population genetic inferences of selection and dominance using historical records of mortality among offspring of close relatives. Third, I will describe how inbreeding depression from recessive deleterious mutations can enhance probability of extinction of small populations that descended from ancestrally larger populations. Lastly, I will show how recessive deleterious mutations can confound inference of adaptive introgression from genomic data. I will close by previewing how we are using this signal to infer the dominance of deleterious mutations in the human genome.   Seminar will be presented live, in-person, in Hershey Hall, Room 158   Seminar will also be live-streamed via Zoom

Host: Jamie Lloyd-Smith