Antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis

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Strength of natural selection plot as a function of age Strengthofselectionplot.png
Strength of natural selection plot as a function of age

The antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis (APT) is a theory in evolutionary biology that suggests certain genes may confer beneficial effects early in an organism's life, enhancing reproductive success, while also causing detrimental effects later in life, contributing to the aging process.

Contents

APT was first proposed in a 1952 paper on the evolutionary theory of ageing by Peter Medawar and developed further in a paper by George C. Williams in 1957 [1] as an explanation for senescence. [2] Pleiotropy is the phenomenon where a single gene influences more than one phenotypic trait in an organism. [3] [4] It is one of the most commonly observed attributes of genes. [5] A gene is considered to exhibit antagonistic pleiotropy if it controls more than one phenotypic trait, where at least one of these traits is beneficial to the organism's fitness and at least one is detrimental to fitness.

This line of genetic research began as an attempt to answer the following question: if survival and reproduction should always be favoured by natural selection, why should ageing – which in evolutionary terms can be described as the age-related decline in survival rate and reproduction – be nearly ubiquitous in the natural world?" [2] The antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis provides a partial answer to this question. As an evolutionary explanation for ageing, the hypothesis relies on the fact that reproductive capacity declines with age in many species and, therefore, the strength of natural selection also declines with age (because there can be no natural selection without reproduction). [6] [7] Since the strength of selection declines over the life cycles of human and most other organisms, natural selection in these species tends to favor "alleles that have early beneficial effects, but later deleterious effects". [8]

Antagonistic pleiotropy also provides a framework for understanding why many genetic disorders, even those causing life threatening health impacts (e.g. sickle cell anaemia), are found to be relatively prevalent in populations. Seen through the lens of simple evolutionary processes, these genetic disorders should be observed at very low frequencies due to the force of natural selection. Genetic models of populations show that antagonistic pleiotropy allows genetic disorders to be maintained at reasonably high frequencies "even if the fitness benefits are subtle". [9] In this sense, antagonistic pleiotropy forms the basis of a "genetic trade-off between different fitness components." [10]

Trade-offs

In the theory of evolution, the concept of fitness has two components: mortality and reproduction. Antagonistic pleiotropy gets fixed in genomes by creating viable trade-offs between or within these two components. The existence of these trade-offs has been clearly demonstrated in human, botanical and insect species. For example, an analysis of global gene expression in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, revealed 34 genes whose expression coincided with the genetic trade-off between larval survival and adult size. The joint expression of these candidate 'trade-off' genes explained 86.3% of the trade-off. These tradeoffs can result from selection at the level of the organism or, more subtly, via mechanisms for the allocation of scarce resources in cellular metabolism. [11]

Another example is found in a study of the yellow monkey flower, an annual plant. The study documents a trade-off between days-to-flower and reproductive capacity. This genetic balancing act determines how many individuals survive to flower in a short growing season (viability) while also influencing the seed set of survivors (fecundity). The authors find that tradeoffs between plant viability and fecundity can engender a stable polymorphism under surprisingly general conditions. Thus, for this annual flower, they reveal a tradeoff between mortality and fecundity and, according to the authors, this tradeoff is also relevant for other annual, flowering plants. [10]

Role in fecundity and senescence

Senescence refers to the process of physiological change in individual members of a species as they age. [9] [12] An antagonistically pleiotropic gene can be selected for if it has beneficial effects in early life while manifesting its negative effects in later life because genes tend to have larger impacts on fitness in an organism's prime than in their old age. [13] Williams's 1957 article has motivated many follow-up studies on the evolutionary causes of ageing. [14] These studies show clear trade-offs involving early increases in fecundity and later increases in mortality. For example, two experiments with Drosophila melanogaster have shown that increased fertility is associated with reduced longevity. Likewise, for humans, infertile women live longer on average than fertile women. [15] [16]

One such study tests the hypothesis that death due to cardiovascular disease in women is linked to an antagonistic pleiotropy operating through inflammation and linked to fertility. Because the human immune system evolved in an ancestral environment characterized by abundant pathogens, protective, pro-inflammatory responses (which helped individuals to avoid and survive infections) were undoubtedly selected for in these environments. However, in terms of cardiovascular risk, these same inflammatory responses have turned out to be harmful as the material conditions of human existence improved – in affluent countries, where life expectancy is much longer than in the ancestral environment, strong inflammatory responses carry greater risks of cardiovascular disease as individuals age. The study looks at mortality, over a period of 3 to 5 years, in a group of 311, 85-year old Dutch women. Information on their reproductive history as well the results of blood tests, genetic tests and physical examinations was recorded. The study found that individuals with a higher pro-inflammatory ratio TNFα/IL-10 had a significantly higher incidence of death due to cardiovascular disease in old age. It also linked specific alleles to a combination of higher fertility, stronger inflammatory response and greater cardiovascular problems in old age. This finding supports the hypothesis that this gene was prevalent because it helped women in the ancestral environment to more effectively combat infection during their reproductive years. However, the pleiotropic costs of the gene in terms of cardiovascular risks are now clear because people live long enough to die of cardiovascular disease. [15]

Role in disease

The survival of many serious genetic disorders in human evolutionary history has led researchers to explore the role of antagonistic pleiotropy in disease. If genetic disorders are caused by mutations to a single deleterious allele, then natural selection should eliminate carriers of this allele over evolutionary time, thereby lowering the frequency of mutations. Yet, research shows that the incidence of such alleles in studied populations is often stable and relatively high. [9] In a 2011 review article, Carter and Nguyen discuss several genetic disorders, arguing that, far from being a rare phenomenon, antagonistic pleiotropy might be a fundamental mechanism by which "alleles with severe deleterious health effects can be maintained at medically relevant frequencies with only minor beneficial pleiotropic effects." [9]

An example of this is sickle cell anaemia, which results in an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin found in red blood cells. [17] Possessors of the deleterious allele have much lower life expectancies, with homozygotes rarely reaching 50 years of age. However, this allele also enhances resistance to malaria. Thus, in regions where malaria exerts or has in the past exerted a strong selective pressure, sickle cell anaemia has been selected for its conferred partial resistance to the disease. While homozygotes will have either no protection from malaria or a dramatic propensity to sickle cell anemia, heterozygotes have fewer physiological effects and a partial resistance to malaria. [18] Thus, the gene that is responsible for sickle cell disease has fixed itself with relatively high frequencies in populations threatened by malaria by engendering a viable tradeoff between death from this non-communicable disease and death from malaria.

In another study of genetic diseases, 99 individuals with Laron syndrome (a rare form of dwarfism) were monitored alongside their non-dwarf kin for a period of ten years. Patients with Laron syndrome possess one of three genotypes for the growth hormone receptor gene (GHR). Most patients have an A->G splice site mutation in position 180 in exon 6. Some others possess a nonsense mutation (R43X), while the rest are heterozygous for the two mutations. Laron syndrome patients experienced a lower incidence of cancer mortality and diabetes compared to their non-dwarf kin. [19] This suggests a role for antagonistic pleiotropy, whereby a deleterious mutation is preserved in a population because it still confers some survival benefit. [9]

Another instance of antagonistic pleiotropy is manifested in Huntington's disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a high number of CAG repeats within the Huntingtin gene. The onset of Huntington's is usually observed post-reproductive age and generally involves involuntary muscle spasms, cognitive difficulties and psychiatric problems. The high number of CAG repeats is associated with increased activity of p53, a tumor suppressing protein that participates in apoptosis. It has been hypothesized that this explains the lower rates of cancer among Huntington's patients. Huntington's disease is also correlated with high fecundity. [9]

Other pleiotropic diseases include: beta-thalassemia (also protects against malaria in the heterozygous state); cystic fibrosis (increased fertility); and osteoporosis in old age (reduced risk of osteoporosis in youth). [9]

Role in sexual selection

Sexual selection is a process of natural selection in which individuals of one sex choose to mate with individuals of the other sex based on certain observable characteristics (intersexual selection, the exaggerated tail in peacocks, for example) or they compete with other individuals of the same sex for access to mating opportunities with individuals of the opposite sex (intrasexual selection, as when males of certain mammalian species fight for the right to mate). [20] It is generally accepted that the evolution of secondary sexual characteristics persists until the relative costs of survival outweigh the benefits of reproductive success. [21]

At the level of genes, this means a trade-off between variation and expression of selected traits. Strong, persistent sexual selection should result in decreased genetic variation for these traits. However, higher levels of variation have been reported in sexually-selected traits compared to non-sexually selected traits. [22] This phenomenon is especially clear in lek species, where males' courtship behavior confers no immediate advantage to the female. Female choice presumably depends on correlating male displays (secondary sexual characteristics) with overall genetic quality. If such directional sexual selection depletes variation in males, why would female choice continue to exist? Rowe and Houle answer this question (the lek paradox) using the notion of genetic capture, which couples the sexually-selected traits with the overall condition of the organism. They posit that the genes for secondary sexual characteristics must be pleiotropically linked to condition, a measure of the organism's fitness. In other words, the genetic variation in secondary sexual characteristics is maintained due to variation in the organism's condition. [23]

Role in DNA repair

DNA repair capability in hamsters is relatively high during development in early mitotic brain cells, but is present at a reduced level in post-mitotic brain cells throughout adulthood. [24] In humans DNA repair capability declines in older individuals. [25] These findings suggest that DNA repair activity is regulated at a level that facilitates vigorous function during youth, but at an insufficient level during maturity that results in aging. Thus proteins that regulate the level of DNA repair activity appear to have the antagonistic pleiotrophic effect of being beneficial during youthful development, but insufficient to prevent aging during maturity.

Ubiquity in population genetics

Advances in genome mappings have greatly facilitated research into antagonistic pleiotropy. Such research is now often carried out in laboratories, but also in wild populations. The latter context for testing has the advantage of introducing the full complexity of the selection experience – competitors, predators, and parasites – though it has the disadvantage of introducing idiosyncratic factors that are specific to given locations. In order to be able to assert with confidence that a given pleiotropy is, indeed, an antagonistic pleiotropy and not due to some other competing cause (e.g. the mutation accumulation hypothesis), one must have knowledge of the precise gene that is pleiotropic. This is now increasingly possible with organisms that have detailed genomic mappings (e.g. mice, fruit flies and humans). A 2018 review of this research finds that "antagonistic pleiotropy is somewhere between very common or ubiquitous in the animal world .... and potentially all living domains... ". [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mutation</span> Alteration in the nucleotide sequence of a genome

In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of damage to DNA, which then may undergo error-prone repair, cause an error during other forms of repair, or cause an error during replication. Mutations may also result from insertion or deletion of segments of DNA due to mobile genetic elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural selection</span> Mechanism of evolution by differential survival and reproduction of individuals

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.

Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and population structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evolutionary biology</span> Study of the processes that produced the diversity of life

Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth. Evolution holds that all species are related and gradually change over generations. In a population, the genetic variations affect the phenotypes of an organism. These changes in the phenotypes will be an advantage to some organisms, which will then be passed on to their offspring. Some examples of evolution in species over many generations are the peppered moth and flightless birds. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polymorphism (biology)</span> Occurrence of two or more clearly different morphs or forms in the population of a species

In biology, polymorphism is the occurrence of two or more clearly different morphs or forms, also referred to as alternative phenotypes, in the population of a species. To be classified as such, morphs must occupy the same habitat at the same time and belong to a panmictic population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evolution of sexual reproduction</span>

Evolution of sexual reproduction describes how sexually reproducing animals, plants, fungi and protists could have evolved from a common ancestor that was a single-celled eukaryotic species. Sexual reproduction is widespread in eukaryotes, though a few eukaryotic species have secondarily lost the ability to reproduce sexually, such as Bdelloidea, and some plants and animals routinely reproduce asexually without entirely having lost sex. The evolution of sexual reproduction contains two related yet distinct themes: its origin and its maintenance. Bacteria and Archaea (prokaryotes) have processes that can transfer DNA from one cell to another, but it is unclear if these processes are evolutionarily related to sexual reproduction in Eukaryotes. In eukaryotes, true sexual reproduction by meiosis and cell fusion is thought to have arisen in the last eukaryotic common ancestor, possibly via several processes of varying success, and then to have persisted.

Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the ability of a population of organisms to not merely generate genetic diversity, but to generate adaptive genetic diversity, and thereby evolve through natural selection.

A heterozygote advantage describes the case in which the heterozygous genotype has a higher relative fitness than either the homozygous dominant or homozygous recessive genotype. Loci exhibiting heterozygote advantage are a small minority of loci. The specific case of heterozygote advantage due to a single locus is known as overdominance. Overdominance is a rare condition in genetics where the phenotype of the heterozygote lies outside of the phenotypical range of both homozygote parents, and heterozygous individuals have a higher fitness than homozygous individuals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pleiotropy</span> Influence of a single gene on multiple phenotypic traits

Pleiotropy occurs when one gene influences two or more seemingly unrelated phenotypic traits. Such a gene that exhibits multiple phenotypic expression is called a pleiotropic gene. Mutation in a pleiotropic gene may have an effect on several traits simultaneously, due to the gene coding for a product used by a myriad of cells or different targets that have the same signaling function.

Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness that has the potential to result from inbreeding. The loss of genetic diversity that is seen due to inbreeding, results from small population size. Biological fitness refers to an organism's ability to survive and perpetuate its genetic material. Inbreeding depression is often the result of a population bottleneck. In general, the higher the genetic variation or gene pool within a breeding population, the less likely it is to suffer from inbreeding depression, though inbreeding and outbreeding depression can simultaneously occur.

Enquiry into the evolution of ageing, or aging, aims to explain why a detrimental process such as ageing would evolve, and why there is so much variability in the lifespans of organisms. The classical theories of evolution suggest that environmental factors, such as predation, accidents, disease, and/or starvation, ensure that most organisms living in natural settings will not live until old age, and so there will be very little pressure to conserve genetic changes that increase longevity. Natural selection will instead strongly favor genes which ensure early maturation and rapid reproduction, and the selection for genetic traits which promote molecular and cellular self-maintenance will decline with age for most organisms.

Human genetic resistance to malaria refers to inherited changes in the DNA of humans which increase resistance to malaria and result in increased survival of individuals with those genetic changes. The existence of these genotypes is likely due to evolutionary pressure exerted by parasites of the genus Plasmodium which cause malaria. Since malaria infects red blood cells, these genetic changes are most common alterations to molecules essential for red blood cell function, such as hemoglobin or other cellular proteins or enzymes of red blood cells. These alterations generally protect red blood cells from invasion by Plasmodium parasites or replication of parasites within the red blood cell.

Evolutionary baggage is the part of the genome of a population that was advantageous in past individuals but is disadvantageous under the pressures exerted by natural selection today.

Host–parasite coevolution is a special case of coevolution, where a host and a parasite continually adapt to each other. This can create an evolutionary arms race between them. A more benign possibility is of an evolutionary trade-off between transmission and virulence in the parasite, as if it kills its host too quickly, the parasite will not be able to reproduce either. Another theory, the Red Queen hypothesis, proposes that since both host and parasite have to keep on evolving to keep up with each other, and since sexual reproduction continually creates new combinations of genes, parasitism favours sexual reproduction in the host.

Interlocus sexual conflict is a type of sexual conflict that occurs through the interaction of a set of antagonistic alleles at two or more different loci, or the location of a gene on a chromosome, in males and females, resulting in the deviation of either or both sexes from the fitness optima for the traits. A co-evolutionary arms race is established between the sexes in which either sex evolves a set of antagonistic adaptations that is detrimental to the fitness of the other sex. The potential for reproductive success in one organism is strengthened while the fitness of the opposite sex is weakened. Interlocus sexual conflict can arise due to aspects of male–female interactions such as mating frequency, fertilization, relative parental effort, female remating behavior, and female reproductive rate.

Intralocus sexual conflict is a type of sexual conflict that occurs when a genetic locus harbours alleles which have opposing effects on the fitness of each sex, such that one allele improves the fitness of males, while the alternative allele improves the fitness of females. Such "sexually antagonistic" polymorphisms are ultimately generated by two forces: (i) the divergent reproductive roles of each sex, such as conflicts over optimal mating strategy, and (ii) the shared genome of both sexes, which generates positive between-sex genetic correlations for most traits. In the long term, intralocus sexual conflict is resolved when genetic mechanisms evolve that decouple the between-sex genetic correlations between traits. This can be achieved, for example, via the evolution of sex-biased or sex-limited genes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epistasis</span> Dependence of a gene mutations phenotype on mutations in other genes

Epistasis is a phenomenon in genetics in which the effect of a gene mutation is dependent on the presence or absence of mutations in one or more other genes, respectively termed modifier genes. In other words, the effect of the mutation is dependent on the genetic background in which it appears. Epistatic mutations therefore have different effects on their own than when they occur together. Originally, the term epistasis specifically meant that the effect of a gene variant is masked by that of different gene.

Recent human evolution refers to evolutionary adaptation, sexual and natural selection, and genetic drift within Homo sapiens populations, since their separation and dispersal in the Middle Paleolithic about 50,000 years ago. Contrary to popular belief, not only are humans still evolving, their evolution since the dawn of agriculture is faster than ever before. It has been proposed that human culture acts as a selective force in human evolution and has accelerated it; however, this is disputed. With a sufficiently large data set and modern research methods, scientists can study the changes in the frequency of an allele occurring in a tiny subset of the population over a single lifetime, the shortest meaningful time scale in evolution. Comparing a given gene with that of other species enables geneticists to determine whether it is rapidly evolving in humans alone. For example, while human DNA is on average 98% identical to chimp DNA, the so-called Human Accelerated Region 1 (HAR1), involved in the development of the brain, is only 85% similar.

This glossary of genetics and evolutionary biology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the study of genetics and evolutionary biology, as well as sub-disciplines and related fields, with an emphasis on classical genetics, quantitative genetics, population biology, phylogenetics, speciation, and systematics. It has been designed as a companion to Glossary of cellular and molecular biology, which contains many overlapping and related terms; other related glossaries include Glossary of biology and Glossary of ecology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mutation accumulation theory</span> Theory of aging

The mutation accumulation theory of aging was first proposed by Peter Medawar in 1952 as an evolutionary explanation for biological aging and the associated decline in fitness that accompanies it. Medawar used the term 'senescence' to refer to this process. The theory explains that, in the case where harmful mutations are only expressed later in life, when reproduction has ceased and future survival is increasingly unlikely, then these mutations are likely to be unknowingly passed on to future generations. In this situation the force of natural selection will be weak, and so insufficient to consistently eliminate these mutations. Medawar posited that over time these mutations would accumulate due to genetic drift and lead to the evolution of what is now referred to as aging.

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