The nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution is a modification of the neutral theory of molecular evolution that accounts for slightly advantageous or deleterious mutations at the molecular level. The nearly neutral theory was proposed by Tomoko Ohta in 1973 (including only deleterious mutations) and expanded in the early 1990s to include both advantageous and deleterious nearly neutral mutations. Unlike in Motoo Kimura's original neutral theory—which dealt only with mutations unaffected by natural selection—the nearly neutral theory predicts a relationship between population size and the rate of molecular evolution: in larger populations, genetic drift, which can bring even slightly deleterious mutations to fixation, is a weaker force, so evolution happens more slowly than in smaller populations.
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Famous quotes containing the words neutral, theory and/or evolution:
“I feel the carousel starting slowly
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Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Psychotherapy—The theory that the patient will probably get well anyway, and is certainly a damned ijjit.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)