User:Brissaluna/Negative selection (natural selection)

Article Draft
What is Negative Selection and how does it relate to Selection? Selection is a well known fundamental attribute of evolution. In simple terms, selection is exactly what it sounds like and relates to the “filtering” of genetic variation. Negative selection is just one side of the coin. Positive selection occurs when an individual genotype, related to an increase in fitness, increases in frequency throughout the population as a whole. This kind of selection is beneficial to the population of a species, as it increases the overall fitness of the population. Negative selection is also beneficial to a population and crucial to the evolutionary success of any species. This form of selection interferes with the inheritance of genotypes associated with a reduction in fitness. As negative selection continues to act on a population in this manner, the frequency of detrimental or non-beneficial genotypes will decrease, the focus of this process is to remove detrimental genetic variants. Thus, positive and negative selection share a mutually beneficial relationship.

What factors initiate Negative Selection? Negative selection is significant to evolution due to its ability to stabilize a population by preventing the inheritance of potentially deleterious mutations throughout continued generations and acting on genetic material associated with a reduction in fitness. Negative selection is a safety mechanism when it comes to ensuring that the genetic composition of a population is not being compromised by mutations.

What kinds of limitations are there to Negative Selection? While negative selection can certainly implement helpful mechanisms, there are limitations to its capabilities. The process of negative selection may be too weak to act on deleterious mutations that arise which will consequently allow for the accumulation of harmful inherited traits. This could potentially further affect a population by reducing its fitness. On the other hand of this limitation. Negative selection can prove to be too effective and actually select against an abundance of variable genotypes. The greatest risk of this would be extinction of a population.

Negative Selection in Action Research has been done to connect the mechanism of negative selection to the mechanism of inheritance. This research related these concepts to inborn errors. Research has also been conducted to display the effects of negative selection in the human thymus.