The hitchhiking effect of an autosomal meiotic drive gene

Abstract

Transmission-ratio distortion is a departure froma 1:1 segregation of alleles in the gametes of a heterozygous individual. The so-called driving allele is strongly selected regardless of its effect on the fitness of the carrying individual. It may then have an important impact on neutral polymorphism due to the genetic hitchhiking effect. We study this hitchhiking effect in the case of true meiotic drive in autosomes and show that it is more dependent onthe recombinationrate thaninthe classical case of a genepositively selected at the organism level. Copyright © 2006 by the Genetics Society of America.