No signal of deleterious mutation accumulation in conserved gene sequences of extant asexual hexapods.

摘要: Loss of sex and recombination is generally assumed to impede the effectiveness purifying selection result in accumulation slightly deleterious mutations. Empirical evidence for this has come from several studies investigating mutational load a small number individual genes. However, recent whole transcriptome based have yielded inconsistent results, hence questioning validity assumption meltdown asexual populations. Here, we study eight hexapod lineages their sexual relatives, as present 1 K Insect Transcriptome Evolution (1KITE) project, covering groups. We analyse nonsynonymous synonymous point mutations 99 single copy orthologue protein-coding loci shared among investigated taxa. While rates differed between genes groups, found no effect reproductive mode on acting at sites. Although setup does not fully rule out nondetection subtle effects, our data support established consensus undergoing ‘mutational meltdown’.