Genomic creativity and natural selection: a modern synthesis

Natural Selection Molds Genomic Insulator Elements

The ‘‘modern synthesis’’ of evolutionary biology, first formulated in the early 20th century, combined the ideas of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution to create an outline for evolutionary theory that stressed the central role of genes in evolutionary processes. Of the genetic changes that drive evolution, the earliest to be studied were in proteins with familiar and prominent roles in ...

Detecting natural selection in genomic data.

The past fifty years have seen the development and application of numerous statistical methods to identify genomic regions that appear to be shaped by natural selection. These methods have been used to investigate the macro- and microevolution of a broad range of organisms, including humans. Here, we provide a comprehensive outline of these methods, explaining their conceptual motivations and s...

Human Fertility, Molecular Genetics, and Natural Selection in Modern Societies

Research on genetic influences on human fertility outcomes such as number of children ever born (NEB) or the age at first childbirth (AFB) has been solely based on twin and family-designs that suffer from problematic assumptions and practical limitations. The current study exploits recent advances in the field of molecular genetics by applying the genomic-relationship-matrix based restricted ma...

Genomic mutation rates that neutralize adaptive evolution and natural selection.

When mutation rates are low, natural selection remains effective, and increasing the mutation rate can give rise to an increase in adaptation rate. When mutation rates are high to begin with, however, increasing the mutation rate may have a detrimental effect because of the overwhelming presence of deleterious mutations. Indeed, if mutation rates are high enough: (i) adaptive evolution may be n...

A Modern Natural Theology?