Genetics of adaptation

Summary

The rediscovery of Mendel's work showing that the heredity of phenotypes is controlled by discrete genes was followed by the reconciliation of Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection in the middle of the last century with the Modern Synthesis. In the past two decades, dramatic advances in genomic methods have facilitated the identification of the loci, genes, and even individual mutations that underlie phenotypic variants that are the putative targets of natural selection. Moreover, these methods have also changed how we can study adaptation by flipping the problem around, allowing us to first examine what loci show evidence of having been under selection, and then connecting these genetic variants to phenotypic variation. As a result, we now have an expanding list of actual