near neutrality & compensatory evolution

Ohta T 2002 Near-neutrality in evolution of genes and gene regulation. PNAS 99:16134-16137.

• the nearly neutral mutations are defined such that their fate in the population depends on both selection and drift (12)

• stabilizing selection on eve expression had led to compensatory turnover of different subregions of the regulatory element
• such changes depend on a series of steps of minor functional modification allowed by drift and selection