What is Rh Incompatibility?

Genetic load is a phenomenon that reduces the fitness of a population due to the presence of harmful alleles in a biological population. The concept proposed by American geneticist HJ Mahler in 1950. The so-called fitness refers to the relative ability of organisms to survive and pass their genes to their offspring. The genetic load of a population can be expressed by the following formula: Genetic load = fitness of the optimal genotype-average fitness of the population / fitness of the optimal genotype. If the fitness of the optimal genotype is set to 1, then it can be simply written: genetic load = 1-average fitness of the population.

Genetic load

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Genetic load is caused by harmful

Among various genetic loads, mutation load and segregation load are the main ones. The remaining loads may only be significant for some individual seats. For example, incompatible loads are important for Rh seats, but they are generally not important.

A simple way to determine the relative importance of mutation load and separation load is to find genes that are lethal in homozygous conditions in experimental organisms and compare the fitness of these heterozygotes with normal homozygotes. If the fitness of most heterozygotes is high, the genetic load mainly comes from the separation load. Conversely, if the fitness of most heterozygotes is lower than that of normal homozygotes, then the genetic load mainly comes from the mutation load. Japanese scholar Shimura Kimura believes that the mutation rate is mostly low and the selection coefficient is often large. Therefore, under normal circumstances, the role of mutation load in genetic load is far less than that of superdominant load or separation load.

Although the genetic load leads to a decrease in the fitness of the population, it can increase the diversity of the population. Genes that are not conducive to survival may become genes that are conducive to survival when the environment changes. Therefore, genetic load can be considered as the price paid by the population to maintain its diversity.

Genetic load can increase or decrease with changes in heredity and environment. Population mixing, gene flow between groups, changes in mutation rates, and changes in environmental factors that are not conducive to heterozygosity can all affect the increase or decrease in genetic load. ^[1]