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Adaptive foci in protein evolution

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Abstract

THE willistoni group of Drosophila consists of several species, subspecies and semispecies endemic to the New World tropics1. We have used electrophoretic techniques to study allelic variation at gene loci coding for enzymes in this group of species. Some 40 gene loci have been assayed in scores of natural populations belonging to 14 different taxa2–11. Two remarkable patterns have emerged. First, within a given taxon the populations (sometimes geographically separated by thousands of kilometres) have quite similar configurations of allelic frequencies at nearly all loci; and second, the allelic configurations observed in different taxa show that any two species have quite similar genetic configurations at about half the loci, but very different configurations at (nearly) the other half. A similar situation obtains when infraspecific taxa are compared, except that the proportion of loci at which the two taxa are similar is more than half, and the proportion of loci at which they are totally different becomes much less than half.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of California, La Jolla, California, 92037

    MICHAEL E. GILPIN & FRANCISCO J. AYALA

  2. Department of Genetics, University of California, Davis, California, 95616

    MICHAEL E. GILPIN & FRANCISCO J. AYALA

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  1. MICHAEL E. GILPIN
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  2. FRANCISCO J. AYALA
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GILPIN, M., AYALA, F. Adaptive foci in protein evolution. Nature 253, 725–726 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/253725a0

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