Thus, the masking effect of a wild-type allele does not appear to be very strong when weakly deleterious mutations are considered.
One possible explanation for this discrepancy is synergistic epistasis among the fitness effects of deleterious mutations.
Deleterious mutations in a hybrid zone : can mutational load decrease the barrier to gene flow ?
Deleterious mutations, apparent stabilizing selection and the maintenance of quantitative variation.
Broadly speaking, greater self-fertilization decreases element number under deleterious insertion and increases element number with regulation through ectopic exchange.
However, there are no reports of deleterious effects in human fetuses.
If this means genetic linkage, that can sometimes explain the presence of deleterious traits.
A less common, and more deleterious, mechanism of spontaneous closure is prolapse of the aortic alve into the defect.
