Meiotic Drive in Insects

Mendel’s law of segregation proposes that equal numbers of alleles (variants of the same gene) derived from the paternally and maternally-derived chromosomes are distributed to eggs and sperm during meiosis (the reductional division that results in haploid eggs or sperm having only one copy of each type of chromosome). However, this law is sometimes violated due to a phenomenon called meiotic drive. Meiotic drive has been studied in insects and has been proposed to be a future tool for suppressing pest populations.

Meiotic drive alters the equal assortment of chromosomes during meiosis so that certain chromosomes are inherited by the progeny more frequently than expected (greater than 50% of the time). Meiotic drive most frequently is observed affecting sex chromosomes (chromosomes that are different in males and females). In most insects, females are XX and males are XY (or heterogametic, with half the sperm receiving the X and half the Y chromosome) and the ratio of male and female...