The neutralist-selectionist debate needs moderating, and this paper makes some good contributions, but ultimately disappoints. It defends #NeutralTheory as acknowledging #BackgroundSelection, but does not qualify that this is only a limited form of background selection - one with strong deleterious effects and Ud<1, such that background selection can be captured by a 1-locus model of random #GeneticDrift with lower #EffectivePopulationSize. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.13010?af=R 1/n

Our latest #preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.475913v2 @jdmatheson calls for significant change to the theory of #BackgroundSelection, a phenomenon by which some genomic segments of some individuals don’t count toward an #EffectivePopulationSize because they contain too many deleterious mutations. 1/5

#MolecularEvolution #PopulationGenetics #MutationLoad #EvolgenPaper