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Natural Selection

Definition
AI-generated

Natural selection is differential survival and reproduction of heritable variants: alleles that improve fitness in a given environment tend to increase in frequency across generations, while deleterious alleles are removed or kept rare depending on dominance, pleiotropy, and changing environments.

Topics
Evolutionary genetics
Related
Gene Flow Genetic Bottleneck Negative Selection

Why it matters in GWAS

Signals of selection can skew allele frequencies and haplotype structure; some disease-associated variants reflect trade-offs, hitchhiking, or ancient adaptations. Cross-population frequency differences are sometimes interpreted jointly with demography and selection scans, though polygenic traits are usually dominated by weak, pleiotropic effects rather than classic selective sweeps alone.

Example usage

"Natural Selection appears in the methods to support interpretation of the primary results."

Gene Flow Genetic Bottleneck Negative Selection Population Expansion Positive Selection Selection Pressure
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References

  • Charlesworth B, Charlesworth D. (2010). Elements of Evolutionary Genetics. Roberts and Company.
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