Talk:Genetic load

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
My sources claims that H. J. Muller introduced concept of genetic load. --Zzzzzzzzzz 14:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Writing Math Notation
How the heck do you write math? I can't find a page anywhere with instructions. Im trying to show a fraction bar multiplied by a quantity in parentheses, but after at least half an hour of trying, I just couldn't figure it out. You'd figure these types of instructions pages would be a little easier to find. Thanks for the help MrPMonday (talk) 01:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

132.66.237.108 (talk) 13:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

 Mutation Load

"Mutation load is caused when a mutation at a locus produces a new allele of either lesser or greater fitness. This lowers the average fitness of the population; a deleterious mutation has a lower relative fitness, lowering average load, while an advantageous mutation effectively increases the relative fitness of the existing allele, and thus also increases average fitness."

An advantageous mutation, while in the long run may achieve fixity in the population, will lower, not increase, average fitness, at first. Fitness is a value normalized so that the most successful specimen gets reevaluated as having highest fitness, thus lowering everyone else's fitness and subsequently the average fitness. So it will increase genetic load but by lowering the average fitness.

I think.

Ideas?

132.66.237.108 (talk) 13:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Mutation math
It's mathematically false that the average relative fitness goes down with the addition of a creature with greater or less than average fitness. You have to factor in the population change, which changes all the frequencies, and the result is that unless the creature is the fittest, the mean changes in the direction of the creature's fitness relative to the mean. A new fittest drives down the relative fitness by changing the max.

The equation layout to see this: avg fitness = (1/N)*(sum over all alleles)[fitness*total creatures with given allele] new average fitness = (1/(N+1))*(fitness of new allele + the same sum as above)

You can treat the new creature as if its allele is unique even if its degenerate because the sum is the same either way.

173.25.54.191 (talk) 19:56, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Mutation rate isn't "high"
The section "Causes" states "Most mutations are deleterious, and occur at a high rate." This is perhaps a bit broad and a bit wrong. Most mutations have little effect on fitness, though the larger the effect the more likely they are to be deleterious. The per-base mutation rate is extremely low (on the order of 1 in ten billion), though since genomes are often billions of bps, and germ cells are generated after tens of cell divisions, the per genome per generation mutation rate is relatively high.Paulhummerman (talk) 22:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)