Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697.
Center for Complex Biological Systems, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jan 2;115(1):151-156. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1707227114. Epub 2017 Dec 18.
Modern molecular genetic datasets, primarily collected to study the biology of human health and disease, can be used to directly measure the action of natural selection and reveal important features of contemporary human evolution. Here we leverage the UK Biobank data to test for the presence of linear and nonlinear natural selection in a contemporary population of the United Kingdom. We obtain phenotypic and genetic evidence consistent with the action of linear/directional selection. Phenotypic evidence suggests that stabilizing selection, which acts to reduce variance in the population without necessarily modifying the population mean, is widespread and relatively weak in comparison with estimates from other species.
现代分子遗传数据集主要用于研究人类健康和疾病的生物学，可用于直接衡量自然选择的作用，并揭示当代人类进化的重要特征。在这里，我们利用英国生物库（UK Biobank）的数据，检测英国当代人群中是否存在线性和非线性自然选择。我们获得了与线性/定向选择作用一致的表型和遗传证据。表型证据表明，与其他物种的估计相比，稳定选择（一种在不改变种群平均值的情况下减少种群方差的选择）广泛存在且相对较弱。
