Talk:Genetic load
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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lolajaudi.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Untitled
[edit]My sources claims that H. J. Muller introduced concept of genetic load. --Zzzzzzzzzz 14:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Writing Math Notation
[edit]How the heck do you write math? I can't find a page anywhere with instructions. Im trying to show a fraction bar multiplied by a quantity in parentheses, but after at least half an hour of trying, I just couldn't figure it out. You'd figure these types of instructions pages would be a little easier to find. Thanks for the help MrPMonday (talk) 01:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
132.66.237.108 (talk) 13:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Mutation Load
"Mutation load is caused when a mutation at a locus produces a new allele of either lesser or greater fitness. This lowers the average fitness of the population; a deleterious mutation has a lower relative fitness, lowering average load, while an advantageous mutation effectively increases the relative fitness of the existing allele, and thus also increases average fitness."
An advantageous mutation, while in the long run may achieve fixity in the population, will lower, not increase, average fitness, at first. Fitness is a value normalized so that the most successful specimen gets reevaluated as having highest fitness, thus lowering everyone else's fitness and subsequently the average fitness. So it will increase genetic load but by lowering the average fitness.
I think.
Ideas?
Mutation math
[edit]It's mathematically false that the average relative fitness goes down with the addition of a creature with greater or less than average fitness. You have to factor in the population change, which changes all the frequencies, and the result is that unless the creature is the fittest, the mean changes in the direction of the creature's fitness relative to the mean. A new fittest drives down the relative fitness by changing the max.
The equation layout to see this: avg fitness = (1/N)*(sum over all alleles)[fitness*total creatures with given allele] new average fitness = (1/(N+1))*(fitness of new allele + the same sum as above)
You can treat the new creature as if its allele is unique even if its degenerate because the sum is the same either way.
Mutation rate isn't "high"
[edit]The section "Causes" states "Most mutations are deleterious, and occur at a high rate." This is perhaps a bit broad and a bit wrong. Most mutations have little effect on fitness, though the larger the effect the more likely they are to be deleterious. The per-base mutation rate is extremely low (on the order of 1 in ten billion), though since genomes are often billions of bps, and germ cells are generated after tens of cell divisions, the per genome per generation mutation rate is relatively high.Paulhummerman (talk) 22:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
Deleterious mutations
[edit]The article is missing any serious discussion about the number of deleterious mutations per generation. This is an important parameter in all species and I'm pretty sure there is data available.
In the case of humans, if there are 100 mutations per generation and 90% of the genome is junk then there are only 10 mutations per generation in functional DNA elements. If the frequency of deleterious mutations in such regions is only 10% then that's one deleterious mutation per generation and there's no "paradox."
It would be helpful to include information on the minimum number of deleterious mutations that can be tolerated. Genome42 (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Somatic cell mutations
[edit]Michael Lynch and others point out that the somatic cell mutation rate is also important, especially in large multicellular organisms. That's because mutations occur every time a genome is replicated.
Somatic cell mutations can cause diseases (e.g. cancer) that can reduce the fitness of the individual and affect the survivability of the population. There's no significant discussion of this form of genetic load in the current article. Genome42 (talk) 21:18, 7 December 2025 (UTC)