Wyckoff G J, Wang W, Wu C I
Committee on Genetics, University of Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Nature. 2000 Jan 20;403(6767):304-9. doi: 10.1038/35002070.
A diverse body of morphological and genetic evidence has suggested that traits pertaining to male reproduction may have evolved much more rapidly than other types of character. Recently, DNA sequence comparisons have also shown a very high level of divergence in male reproductive proteins between closely related Drosophila species, among marine invertebrates and between mouse and rat. Here we show that rapid evolution of male reproductive genes is observable in primates and is quite notable in the lineages to human and chimpanzee. Nevertheless, rapid evolution by itself is not necessarily an indication of positive darwinian selection; relaxation of negative selection is often equally compatible with the DNA sequence data. By taking three statistical approaches, we show that positive darwinian selection is often the driving force behind this rapid evolution. These results open up opportunities to test the hypothesis that sexual selection plays some role in the molecular evolution of higher primates.
大量形态学和遗传学证据表明，与雄性生殖相关的性状可能比其他类型的性状进化得快得多。最近，DNA序列比较也显示，在亲缘关系较近的果蝇物种之间、海洋无脊椎动物之间以及小鼠和大鼠之间，雄性生殖蛋白存在非常高的差异水平。我们在此表明，雄性生殖基因的快速进化在灵长类动物中是可观察到的，在人类和黑猩猩的谱系中尤为显著。然而，快速进化本身并不一定表明存在正向达尔文选择；负向选择的放松通常同样与DNA序列数据相符。通过采用三种统计方法，我们表明正向达尔文选择往往是这种快速进化背后的驱动力。这些结果为检验性选择在高等灵长类动物分子进化中发挥某种作用这一假说提供了机会。
