Charlesworth Brian
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
Nat Rev Genet. 2009 Mar;10(3):195-205. doi: 10.1038/nrg2526.
The effective size of a population, N(e), determines the rate of change in the composition of a population caused by genetic drift, which is the random sampling of genetic variants in a finite population. N(e) is crucial in determining the level of variability in a population, and the effectiveness of selection relative to drift. This article reviews the properties of N(e) in a variety of different situations of biological interest, and the factors that influence it. In particular, the action of selection means that N(e) varies across the genome, and advances in genomic techniques are giving new insights into how selection shapes N(e).
种群的有效大小N(e)决定了由遗传漂变引起的种群组成变化速率，遗传漂变是指在有限种群中对遗传变异的随机抽样。N(e)对于确定种群中的变异水平以及选择相对于漂变的有效性至关重要。本文综述了在各种具有生物学意义的不同情况下N(e)的特性以及影响它的因素。特别地，选择的作用意味着N(e)在基因组中会发生变化，而基因组技术的进步正在为选择如何塑造N(e)提供新的见解。
