Gene conversion disparity: factors influencing its direction and extent, with tests of assumptions and predictions in its evolutionary effects.

The evolutionarily important characteristics of gene conversion disparity extent and direction are surveyed in fungi. Temperature and background genotype can have small or large effects, sometimes even changing the direction of disparity. Disparity results from Sordaria and Ascobolus were very similar, with between-strain, between-data set and between-locus differences being larger than those between species or genera. In general, different loci in an organism show similar disparity properties when comparable types of mutation are considered, but may not do so in pooled results containing different proportions of different mutation types. Frameshifts typically have strong disparities, usually with negative signs for single base additions and positive signs for single base deletions. Base substitutions tend to have moderate disparities, favoring wild type more often than mutant in most data sets. Large deletions usually have significant disparity, either positive or negative. For comparable molecular types of mutation, spontaneous and induced mutations had roughly similar disparity properties.--Experimental tests and theoretical considerations generally failed to support a number of assumptions and predictions made in previous treatments of gene conversion in evolution. In general, a mutation's conversion properties depend much more on its molecular type in relation to wild type than on any evolved conversion advantages or disadvantages.