Selective sweep of a novel
advantageous mutation:
Hitchhiking of
a linked neutral SNP
As previously shown, a new mutation (red SNP) in the sixth
chromosomal haplotype confers a strong selective
advantage and rapidly replaces the others in a selective "sweep".
Ordinarily this would eliminate the existing blue SNP. However, if
during the sweep, recombination occurs between
haplotypes ##5 & 6, the blue
SNP in #5 is transposed to a copy of #6,
creating a modified haplotype the combines the red & blue SNPs.
The selective sweep is driven by the
selective advantage of the red
SNP: the blue
SNP is carried along with the sweep by
linkage, irrespective of its neutral selective
advantage. This phenomenon is called "hitchhiking",
and makes it difficult to determine which of several
linked SNPs is actually subject to positive
selection. For example, although an inherited
predisposition to a disease may be mapped to an area of
the short arm of a chromosome in a particular family,
because the entire region is inherited as a linkage
group, many SNP differences between this region
and homologous regions in other unaffected families must
be compared.
In such cases, the "candidate gene"
approach may be used to narrow the range of SNPs to
be examined to those that occur in genes functionally
related to the condition of interest.
Figure
modified after © 2013 by Sinauer; Text material ©
2024 by Steven M. Carr