lethal allele

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Related to lethal allele: Multiple alleles

lethal allele

An allele whose expression results in the death of the organism, usually during embryogenesis.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive ?

One of the reasons why it has been difficult to bring microevolutionary experiments into classrooms is the obvious tradeoff between choosing an allele that is strongly selected against, such as a lethal allele, and choosing one that is easy to visualize.

The expected frequency of flightless mutants was estimated according to discrete generation selection against a lethal allele (Crow & Kimura, 1970: eq.

When a fly has to fly to reproduce: selection against conditional recessive lethals in Drosophila

Introduction of a lethal allele into a feral mouse population.

The role of deme size, reproductive patterns and, dispersal in the dynamics of t-lethal haplotypes

Selection against lethal alleles in females heterozygous for incontinentia pigmenti.

Vesicular rash in a newborn girl

Lethal alleles in Mus musculus: local distribution and evidence for isolation of demes.

Low frequency of t haplotypes in natural populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)

The dominance coefficients of slightly deleterious alleles have been estimated to be about 0.3, whereas lethal alleles tend to be recessive (Simmons and Crow 1977; Johnston and Schoen 1995).

Fixation probabilities of selfing rate modifiers in simulations with several deleterious alleles with linkage

Model relating unsound seed and embryonic lethal alleles in self-pollinated pines.

Geographical variation in the inbreeding depression of Scots pine

In this paper, we investigate two mechanisms that may help to explain these observations: (1) a high genomic mutation rate to recessive lethal alleles, and (2) selective interference among loci with deleterious recessive mutations under partial selfing.

High inbreeding depression, selective interference among loci, and the threshold selfing rate for purging recessive lethal mutations

As noted by Werren and by Donald Waller, even lethal alleles tend to have measurable effects on the fitness of their heterozygous carriers, but several other authors persist in stating that detrimental alleles are recessive.