Fig. 1: Examples of genes from different species with adaptive or beneficial loss-of-function alleles.

In each example, multiple independent variants can be combined to constitute the population scale loss-of-function allele state. a Loss of function in SLC30A8 is associated with reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in humans (Flannick et al. 2014; Dwivedi et al. 2019). b Experimental evolution in Pseudomonas aeruginosa resulted repeatedly in loss-of-function mutations in nfxB, conferring antibiotic resistance (Wong et al. 2012). c Experimental evolution in yeast led to consistent disruption of specific signaling pathway genes including MTH1 during adaptation to stable environments (Kvitek and Sherlock 2013). d Populations of Plasmodium falciparum repeatedly evolved loss-of-function alleles in Epac during adaptation to lab culture environments (Claessens et al. 2017). e Natural RDO5 loss-of-function variants in Arabidopsis thaliana occurred at high frequency in northwest Europe and caused reduced seed dormancy, a trait under strong locally adaptive selection (Xiang et al. 2016). f Adaptation to agricultural intensification led to selection for semi-dwarf rice, which is caused by loss-of-function variants in GA20ox2 (Spielmeyer et al. 2002; Sasaki et al. 2002).