The Boechera genus diverged from the well studied Arabidopsis genus recently. In

Question

The Boechera genus diverged from the well studied Arabidopsis genus recently. In a species of Boechera, populations contain both sexual individuals and individuals that reproduce by asexual seeds (embryos contain identical clones of the maternal parent and no meiosis occurs during their formation). All plants are diploid. The sexual plants have a selling rate of 85%. In a genetic study, two important findings were presented: Asexual plants have on average 50% higher observed heterozygosity than sexual plants. When compared to the ancestral Arabidopsis DNA sequences, the asexual plants show more divergence than the sexuals. In other words, asexuals are less similar to the common ancestor than are sexual plants. In a brief paragraph, provide a plausible explanation for these Findings relating them to what we've learned about inbreeding and mutation.

Explanation / Answer

Estimates of the rate of mutation to mildly deleterious alleles are fundamental to the testing of theories of the maintenance of sexual reproduction and recombination. There are , however, few estimates of this parameter. We suggest that data on inbreeding depression in highly self -fertilizing populations might provide such estimates. The effects of inbreeding in reducing genetic load and inbreeding depression is well known, but little attention has beem paid to the magnitude of these quantities in highly inbred natural populations. Modelling of mutational load shows that highly self fertilizing populations should still have some genetic load and inbreeding depression. In such populations, inbreeding depression is the converse of heterosis and its magnitude can be estimated from the increase in fitness related charecterstics in individuals produced by inbreeding depression strains. Here we derive the inbred populations, and use it to estimate mutation rates per genome for some plant species.

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