Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Mol Ecol. 2019 Mar;28(6):1263-1282. doi: 10.1111/mec.14871. Epub 2018 Nov 3.
Chromosomal inversions, structural mutations that reverse a segment of a chromosome, cause suppression of recombination in the heterozygous state. Several studies have shown that inversion polymorphisms can form clines or fluctuate predictably in frequency over seasonal time spans. These observations prompted the hypothesis that chromosomal rearrangements might be subject to spatially and/or temporally varying selection. Here, we review what has been learned about the adaptive significance of inversion polymorphisms in the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster, the species in which they were first discovered by Sturtevant in 1917. A large body of work provides compelling evidence that several inversions in this system are adaptive; however, the precise selective mechanisms that maintain them polymorphic in natural populations remain poorly understood. Recent advances in population genomics, modelling and functional genetics promise to greatly improve our understanding of this long-standing and fundamental problem in the near future.
染色体倒位是一种结构突变，它会使染色体的一段发生反转，导致杂合状态下重组的抑制。有几项研究表明，倒位多态性可以在季节性时间跨度内形成梯度或可预测地波动。这些观察结果促使人们假设染色体重排可能受到空间和/或时间变化的选择。在这里，我们回顾了在第一个发现倒位多态性的物种——黑腹果蝇中，倒位多态性的适应性意义。大量的研究工作提供了令人信服的证据，表明该系统中的几个倒位是适应性的；然而，在自然种群中保持它们多态性的确切选择机制仍知之甚少。群体基因组学、建模和功能遗传学的最新进展有望在不久的将来极大地提高我们对这一长期存在的基本问题的理解。
