Correlative genetic variation in natural populations of cats, mice and men

Abstract

The study of the extent and basis of gene-enzyme variation has long been a principal concern of population genetics. Numerous surveys have indicated considerable amounts of genetic variation detectable in natural populations, with few exceptions. The variances of average heterozygosities (H) between species and among populations within species are large, prompting Lewontin to emphasize the importance of large gene sample sizes and Selander to encourage analysis of variation of homologous gene-enzyme systems when making species comparisons. We present here a comparative genetic analysis of electrophoretic variation at 57 homologous biochemical loci of cats, mice and men. The distribution of polymorphism among the sampled loci in the three species was nonrandom. A large group of sampled loci (60%) were monomorphic in all three species, whereas a second group (30%) of the loci were polymorphic in two or more species. This conservation of the tolerance of genetic polymorphism is apparently more a characteristic of a particular locus than of the vertebrate species or of the genome. The current hypotheses for classifying polymorphic and monomorphic loci in terms of physiological and physical enzyme characteristics have been re-examined.