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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 2004 Jan 29;359(1441):129–140. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2003.1418

Hypervariability, suppressed recombination and the genetics of individuality.

M V Olson 1, A Kas 1, K Bubb 1, R Qui 1, E E Smith 1, C K Raymond 1, R Kaul 1
PMCID: PMC1693296  PMID: 15065665

Abstract

We define 'genetic individuality' as intraspecies variation that has substantial heritability and involves traits that are sufficiently common that they can be observed in any modest-sized sampling of individuals. We propose that genetic individuality is largely shaped by the combinatory shuffling of a modest number of genes, each of which exists as a family of functionally and structurally diverged alleles. Unequivocal examples of such allele families are found at the O-antigen-biosynthetic locus in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the human leucocyte antigen locus in humans. We examine characteristic features of these allele families and explore the possibility that genetic loci with similar characteristics can be recognized in a whole-genome scan of human genetic variation.

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