scholarly journals Living in each other’s pockets: Nucleotide variation inside a genomic island harboring Pan I and its neighbors in Atlantic cod

Author(s):  
Ubaldo Benitez Hernandez ◽  
Einar Árnason

The Pan I locus in Atlantic cod lies in a genomic island of divergence extending over a large genomic region. The locus has two divergent alleles, defined by a single DraI restriction site, that have been related to behavioral differences of habitat selection by depth and temperature. The Pan I locus is known to be under an unusual mix of balancing selection and selective sweeps within the functional types. Here we study nucleotide variation in a 12.5 kb region inside the genomic island harboring Pan I and neighboring loci for sortilin 1 (Sort1) and ataxin 7-like 2 (Atxn7l2) which we partially covered. Variation of the 31 gene copies throughout the region falls into two divergent haplogroups that correlate with the 25 copies of A and six copies of B alleles of Pan I. The unfolded site frequency spectrum for the part with Pacific cod used as the outgroup is trimodal with a mode at singletons and two high frequency modes at 6/31 and 25/31 representing the two genealogical lineages. The folded site frequency spectrum for the entire region similarly has a high frequency mode of mutations that have accumulated on the two lineages. The high frequency of singletons is accounted for by multiple merger coalescent models. Parameter estimates using these models indicate sweepstakes reproduction. The high frequency modes of the spectrum is evidence for balancing selection. Analysis of non-synonymous changes shows that Pan I is at least one focus of selection within the genomic island. There may be multiple sites of selection and epistatic interactions. There is extensive linkage disequilibrium throughout the region. We suggest that the genomic island of divergence is a supergene of co-adapted complexes possibly locked together by structural variation.

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ubaldo Benitez Hernandez ◽  
Einar Árnason

The Pan I locus in Atlantic cod lies in a genomic island of divergence extending over a large genomic region. The locus has two divergent alleles, defined by a single DraI restriction site, that have been related to behavioral differences of habitat selection by depth and temperature. The Pan I locus is known to be under an unusual mix of balancing selection and selective sweeps within the functional types. Here we study nucleotide variation in a 12.5 kb region inside the genomic island harboring Pan I and neighboring loci for sortilin 1 (Sort1) and ataxin 7-like 2 (Atxn7l2) which we partially covered. Variation of the 31 gene copies throughout the region falls into two divergent haplogroups that correlate with the 25 copies of A and six copies of B alleles of Pan I. The unfolded site frequency spectrum for the part with Pacific cod used as the outgroup is trimodal with a mode at singletons and two high frequency modes at 6/31 and 25/31 representing the two genealogical lineages. The folded site frequency spectrum for the entire region similarly has a high frequency mode of mutations that have accumulated on the two lineages. The high frequency of singletons is accounted for by multiple merger coalescent models. Parameter estimates using these models indicate sweepstakes reproduction. The high frequency modes of the spectrum is evidence for balancing selection. Analysis of non-synonymous changes shows that Pan I is at least one focus of selection within the genomic island. There may be multiple sites of selection and epistatic interactions. There is extensive linkage disequilibrium throughout the region. We suggest that the genomic island of divergence is a supergene of co-adapted complexes possibly locked together by structural variation.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Einar Árnason ◽  
Katrín Halldórsdóttir

A high-fecundity organisms, such as Atlantic cod, can withstand substantial natural selection and can at any time simultaneously replace alleles at a number of loci due to their excess reproductive capacity. High-fecundity organisms may reproduce by sweepstakes leading to highly skewed heavy-tailed offspring distribution. Under such reproduction the Kingman coalescent of binary mergers breaks down and models of multiple merger coalescent are more appropriate. Here we study nucleotide variation at the Ckma (Creatine Kinase Muscle type A) gene in Atlantic cod. The gene shows extreme differentiation between the North (Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Barents Sea) and the South (Faroe Islands, North-, Baltic-, Celtic-, and Irish Seas) with a between regions FST > 0.8 whereas neutral loci show no differentiation. This is evidence for natural selection. The protein sequence is conserved by purifying selection whereas silent and non-coding sites show extreme differentiation. Relative to outgroup the site-frequency spectrum has three modes, a mode at singleton sites and two high frequency modes at opposite frequencies representing divergent branches of the gene genealogy that is evidence for balancing selection. Analysis with multiple-merger coalescent models can account for the high frequency of singleton sites and indicate reproductive sweepstakes. Coalescent time scales with population size and with the inverse of variance in offspring number. Parameter estimates using multiple-merger coalescent models show fast time-scales. Time-scales of mitochondrial DNA are about square root of the effective population size and time-scales of nuclear genes are much faster.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Einar Árnason ◽  
Katrín Halldórsdóttir

A high-fecundity organisms, such as Atlantic cod, can withstand substantial natural selection and can at any time simultaneously replace alleles at a number of loci due to their excess reproductive capacity. High-fecundity organisms may reproduce by sweepstakes leading to highly skewed heavy-tailed offspring distribution. Under such reproduction the Kingman coalescent of binary mergers breaks down and models of multiple merger coalescent are more appropriate. Here we study nucleotide variation at the Ckma (Creatine Kinase Muscle type A) gene in Atlantic cod. The gene shows extreme differentiation between the North (Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Barents Sea) and the South (Faroe Islands, North-, Baltic-, Celtic-, and Irish Seas) with a between regions FST > 0.8 whereas neutral loci show no differentiation. This is evidence for natural selection. The protein sequence is conserved by purifying selection whereas silent and non-coding sites show extreme differentiation. Relative to outgroup the site-frequency spectrum has three modes, a mode at singleton sites and two high frequency modes at opposite frequencies representing divergent branches of the gene genealogy that is evidence for balancing selection. Analysis with multiple-merger coalescent models can account for the high frequency of singleton sites and indicate reproductive sweepstakes. Coalescent time scales with population size and with the inverse of variance in offspring number. Parameter estimates using multiple-merger coalescent models show fast time-scales. Time-scales of mitochondrial DNA are about square root of the effective population size and time-scales of nuclear genes are much faster.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Blath ◽  
Mathias C Cronjager ◽  
Bjarki Eldon ◽  
Matthias Hammer

We give recursions for the expected site-frequency spectrum associated with so-calledXi-coalescents, that is exchangeable coalescents which admitsimultaneous multiple mergersof ancestral lineages. Xi-coalescents arise, for example, in association with population models of skewed offspring distributions with diploidy, recurrent advantageous mutations, or strong bottlenecks. In contrast, the simplerLambda-coalescentsadmit multiple mergers of lineages, but at most one such merger each time. Xi-coalescents, as well as Lambda-coalescents, can predict an excess of singletons, compared to the Kingman coalescent. We compare estimates of coalescent parameters when Xi-coalescents are applied to data generated by Lambda-coalescents, and vice versa. In general, Xi-coalescents predict fewer singletons than corresponding Lambda-coalescents, but a higher count of mutations of size larger than singletons. We fit examples of Xi-coalescents to unfolded site-frequency spectra obtained for autosomal loci of the diploid Atlantic cod, and obtain different coalescent parameter estimates than obtained with corresponding Lambda-coalescents. Our results provide new inference tools, and suggest that for autosomal population genetic data from diploid or polyploid highly fecund populations who may have skewed offspring distributions, one should not apply Lambda-coalescents, but Xi-coalescents.


Genetics ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 147 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-621
Author(s):  
Laura A Katz ◽  
Richard G Harrison

Two species of crickets, Gryllus veletis and G. pennsylvanicus, share six electrophoretic mobility classes for the enzyme phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI), despite evidence from other genetic markers that the two species are not closely related within eastern North American field crickets. Moreover, the frequencies of the two most common PGI electrophoretic classes (PGI-100 and PGI-65) covary in sympatric populations of these species in the eastern United States, suggesting that PGI may be subject to trans-specific balancing selection. To determine the molecular basis of the electrophoretic variation, we characterized the DNA sequence of the Pgi gene from 29 crickets (15 G. veletis and 14 G. pennsylvanicus). Amino acid substitutions that distinguish the electrophoretic classes are not the same in the two species, and there is no evidence that specific replacement substitutions represent trans-specific polymorphism. In particular, the amino acids that diagnose the PGI-65 allele relative to the PGI-100 allele differ both between G. veletis and G. pennsylvanicus and within G. pennsylvanicus. The heterogeneity among electrophoretic classes that covary in sympatric populations coupled with analysis of patterns of nucleotide variation suggest that Pgi is not evolving neutrally. Instead, the data are consistent with balancing selection operating on an emergent property of the PGI protein.


Genetics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 155 (2) ◽  
pp. 863-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmi Kuittinen ◽  
Montserrat Aguadé

AbstractAn ~1.9-kb region encompassing the CHI gene, which encodes chalcone isomerase, was sequenced in 24 worldwide ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. and in 1 ecotype of A. lyrata ssp. petraea. There was no evidence for dimorphism at the CHI region. A minimum of three recombination events was inferred in the history of the sampled ecotypes of the highly selfing A. thaliana. The estimated nucleotide diversity (θTOTAL = 0.004, θSIL = 0.005) was on the lower part of the range of the corresponding estimates for other gene regions. The skewness of the frequency spectrum toward an excess of low-frequency polymorphisms, together with the bell-shaped distribution of pairwise nucleotide differences at CHI, suggests that A. thaliana has recently experienced a rapid population growth. Although this pattern could also be explained by a recent selective sweep at the studied region, results from the other studied loci and from an AFLP survey seem to support the expansion hypothesis. Comparison of silent polymorphism and divergence at the CHI region and at the Adh1 and ChiA revealed in some cases a significant deviation of the direct relationship predicted by the neutral theory, which would be compatible with balancing selection acting at the latter regions.


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