Sarah E. Zanders

Abstract Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic loci that can be transmitted to more than half of the viable gametes produced by a heterozygote. This biased transmission gives meiotic drivers an evolutionary advantage that can allow them to spread over generations until all members of a population carry the driver. This evolutionary power can also be exploited to modify natural populations using synthetic drivers known as gene drives.

The heredity of most genes in eukaryotes can be described as “mendelian.” This term is, of course, named after Gregor Mendel, the first to formally describe the foundations of eukaryotic genetics [1]. Mendelian genes are those that follow what is now known as Mendel’s law of segregation. This law describes how parents transmit only 1 of the 2 copies they carry of a given gene to a given offspring. The gene copy selected is random and diploid organisms inherit 1 copy of each gene from each parent.

Abstract Meiotic drivers bias gametogenesis to ensure their transmission into more than half the offspring of a heterozygote. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, wtf meiotic drivers destroy the meiotic products (spores) that do not inherit the driver from a heterozygote, thereby reducing fertility. wtf drivers encode both a Wtf poison protein and a Wtf antidote protein using alternative transcriptional start sites.