- THIS ARTICLE
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- A corrigendum has been published
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- SERVICES
- Email this article to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Alert me to new issues of the journal
- Download to citation manager
- Reprints & Permissions
- CITING ARTICLES
- Citing Articles via HighWire
- Citing Articles via Google Scholar
- GOOGLE SCHOLAR
- Articles by Mills, W.
- Articles by Moore, T.
- Search for Related Content
- PUBMED
- PubMed Citation
- Articles by Mills, W.
- Articles by Moore, T.
Genetics, Vol. 168, 2317-2327, December 2004, Copyright © 2004
doi:10.1534/genetics.104.030098
Polyandry, Life-History Trade-Offs and the Evolution of Imprinting at Mendelian Loci
Walter Mills* and
Tom Moore
,1
* Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, United Kingdom
Department of Biochemistry, Biosciences Institute, University College, Cork, Ireland
1 Corresponding author: Department of Biochemistry, Biosciences Institute, University College, College Rd., Cork, Ireland.
E-mail: t.moore{at}ucc.ie
Genomic imprinting causes parental origin-dependent differential expression of a small number of genes in mammalian and angiosperm plant embryos, resulting in non-Mendelian inheritance of phenotypic traits. The "conflict" theory of the evolution of imprinting proposes that reduced genetic relatedness of paternally, relative to maternally, derived alleles in offspring of polygamous females supports parental sex-specific selection at gene loci that influence maternal investment. While the theory's physiological predictions are well supported by observation, the requirement of polyandry in the evolution of imprinting from an ancestral Mendelian state has not been comprehensively analyzed. Here, we use diallelic models to examine the influence of various degrees of polyandry on the evolution of both Mendelian and imprinted autosomal gene loci that influence trade-offs between maternal fecundity and offspring viability. We show that, given a plausible assumption on the physiological relationship between maternal fecundity and offspring viability, low levels of polyandry are sufficient to reinforce exclusively the fixation of "greedy" paternally imprinted alleles that increase offspring viability at the expense of maternal fecundity and "thrifty" maternally imprinted alleles of opposite effect. We also show that, for all levels of polyandry, Mendelian alleles at genetic loci that influence the trade-off between maternal fecundity and offspring viability reach an evolutionary stable state, whereas pairs of reciprocally imprinted alleles do not.
This article has been cited by other articles:
 |
|
 |
|
  P. B. Samollow The opossum genome: Insights and opportunities from an alternative mammal Genome Res., August 1, 2008; 18(8): 1199 - 1215. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 C. De Geyter, M. De Geyter, S. Steimann, H. Zhang, and W. Holzgreve Comparative birth weights of singletons born after assisted reproduction and natural conception in previously infertile women Hum. Reprod., March 1, 2006; 21(3): 705 - 712. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|