Evolution of Sexual Reproduction - Deleterious Mutation Clearance

Deleterious Mutation Clearance

Mutations can have many different effects upon an organism. It is generally believed that the majority of non-neutral mutations are deleterious, which means that they will cause a decrease in the organism's overall fitness. If a mutation has a deleterious effect, it will then usually be removed from the population by the process of natural selection. Sexual reproduction is believed to be more efficient than asexual reproduction in removing those mutations from the genome.

There are two main hypotheses which explain how sex may act to remove deleterious genes from the genome.

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