STRs serve this purpose because they are neutral to selection pressure, exhibit multiple alleles (sometimes dozens), and hence demonstrate high levels of heterozygosity under equilibrium conditions.
Nonetheless, natural selection does not have any effect on satellite repeats, because satDNA sequences are not transcribable and are consequently neutral to selection [6,7].
We conclude that the genetic architecture of loneliness points to non-additive genetic influences, suggesting it may be a trait that was not neutral to selection in our evolutionary past.
Most personality traits, by contrast, seem to be neither neutral to selection nor under consistent directional or stabilizing selection.
Introns are generally neutral to selection and undergo rapid change during evolution [ 49], therefore high sequence similarity between orthologous introns indicate a functional constraint during evolution [ 52].
While the results of population genetic studies provide important background information, the molecular markers used in these studies are generally neutral to selection and may not detect important adaptive differences among populations.
In some cases, mutations are not deleterious, or even neutral to selection, but instead may be beneficial; perhaps enabling the bearer to perform some biochemical reaction more efficiently, metabolize a new substrate, or invade a new ecological niche.
In this paper we aim to determine whether BRCA1 mutations have been neutral or under negative selection in recent human history.
Nevertheless, the sporadic occurrence of CNVs in the genomes of ancestral key bulls in regions that are neutral for selection are expected to result in some frequent CNVs that have no function.
We considered substitution rates previously estimated from our intron and mitochondrial mammalian trees as mutation rates to be used in the species tree, under the assumption that the markers are neutral and selection did not significantly affect them [ 17, 18].
