The partial dominance hypothesis in
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
states that
inbreeding depression
Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness which has the potential to result from inbreeding (the breeding of related individuals). Biological fitness refers to an organism's ability to survive and perpetuate its genetic material. ...
is the result of the frequency increase of homozygous deleterious recessive or partially recessive alleles. The partial dominance hypothesis can be explained by looking at a population that is divided into a large number of separately inbred lines. Deleterious alleles will eventually be eliminated from some lines and become fixed in other lines, while some lines disappear because of fixation of deleterious alleles. This will cause an overall decline in population and trait value, but then increase to a trait value that is equal to or greater than the trait value in the original population. Crossing inbred lines restores fitness in the overdominance hypothesis and a fitness increase in the partial dominance hypothesis.
[Roff, D.A. 2002. Inbreeding Depression: Tests of the Overdominance and Partial Dominance Hypotheses. Evolution 56:768-775.]
References
Genetics
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