DISTRIBUTION OF GENE FREQUENCY AS A TEST OF THE THEORY OF THE SELECTIVE NEUTRALITY OF POLYMORPHISMS

R. C. Lewontin ¹ and Jesse Krakauer ²

¹ Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
² Department of Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637

The variation in gene frequency among populations or between generations within a population is a result of breeding structure and selection. But breeding structure should affect all loci and alleles in the same way. If there is significant heterogeneity between loci in their apparent inbreeding coefficients F=s_p²/p(1-p), this heterogeneity may be taken as evidence for selection. We have given the statistical properties of F and shown how tests of heterogeneity can be made. Using data from human populations we have shown highly significant heterogeneity in F values for human polymorphic genes over the world, thus demonstrating that a significant fraction of human polymorphisms owe their current gene frequencies to the action of natural selection. We have also applied the method to temporal variation within a population for data on Dacus oleae and have found no significant evidence of selection.

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