The Maintenance of Genetic Variation in Bacterial Populations

Abstract

Abstract It seems appropriate that the maintenance of genetic variation is the topic I have been assigned for this festschrift. Estimating the amount and accounting for the persistence of genetic variation in populations was the main focus of my training as a graduate student under Jack Schull’s mentorship, in the mid 1960s. Composing and validating stories about genetic diversity in populations—tales illustrated by equations, graphs, and tables of gene and genotype frequency data—was what most population geneticists did then, and still do (although now spots on gels and sequences of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s are included among the illustrations). The mechanisms responsible for maintaining genetic variability in populations continue to be a major focus of my research and that of the students, postdocs and collaborators working with me. However, our current stories are, I am pleased to say, different from those I learned as a student (or so they seem to me). Then my research was with sexually reproducing eukaryotes. For most of my post-student career, I have worked with bacteria.