Relative Importance Of Natural Selection Research Articles

Natural selection and genetic drift in protein polymorphism.

THE Kimura theory1 that protein polymorphism is mainly due to random genetic drift acting on a number of neutral isoalleles has been recently discussed by many authors2–4. The electrophoretic study of populations of the same species having different geographical origin and showing great fluctuations in number offers possibilities for testing the relative importance of natural selection and genetic drift in the context. We report a study of two species of mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti and Aedes mariae, for the phosphoglucomutase (PGM) locus. This is an autosomal locus belonging in A. aegypti to the linkage group 2 and showing in both species a very high number of electrophoretically detectable alleles (Bullini et al., refs. 5 and 6, and unpublished data).