Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
CNRS, UMR3525, Paris, France.
Mol Biol Evol. 2018 Jun 1;35(6):1338-1347. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msy078.
I detail four major open problems in microbial population genetics with direct implications to the study of molecular evolution: the lack of neutral polymorphism, the modeling of promiscuous genetic exchanges, the genetics of ill-defined populations, and the difficulty of untangling selection and demography in the light of these issues. Together with the historical focus on the study of single nucleotide polymorphism and widespread non-random sampling, these problems limit our understanding of the genetic variation in bacterial populations and their adaptive effects. I argue that we need novel theoretical approaches accounting for pervasive selection and strong genetic linkage to better understand microbial evolution.
我详细阐述了微生物群体遗传学中四个主要的开放性问题，这些问题直接影响到分子进化的研究：缺乏中性多态性、混杂遗传交换的建模、定义不明确的群体遗传学以及在这些问题的背景下，难以区分选择和人口统计学的影响。再加上历史上对单核苷酸多态性的研究重点和广泛的非随机抽样，这些问题限制了我们对细菌种群遗传变异及其适应性影响的理解。我认为，我们需要新的理论方法来解释普遍存在的选择和强烈的遗传连锁，以更好地理解微生物进化。
