Inferring the demographic history and rate of adaptive substitution in Drosophila.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Li H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC1599771 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Population demographic history may be learned from contemporary genetic variation data. Methods based on aggregating the statistics of many single loci into an allele frequency spectrum (AFS) have proven powerful, but such methods ignore potentially informative patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between neighboring loci. To leverage such patterns, we developed a composite-likelihood framework for inferring demographic history from aggregated statistics of pairs of loci. Using this framework, we show that two-locus statistics are more sensitive to demographic history than single-locus statistics such as the AFS. In particular, two-locus statistics escape the notorious confounding of depth and duration of a bottleneck, and they provide a means to estimate effective population size based on the recombination rather than mutation rate. We applied our approach to a Zambian population of Drosophila melanogaster Notably, using both single- and two-locus statistics, we inferred a substantially lower ancestral effective population size than previous works and did not infer a bottleneck history. Together, our results demonstrate the broad potential for two-locus statistics to enable powerful population genetic inference.
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Project description:The relative female and male contributions to demography are of great importance to better understand the history and dynamics of populations. While earlier studies relied on uniparental markers to investigate sex-specific questions, the increasing amount of sequence data now enables us to take advantage of tens to hundreds of thousands of independent loci from autosomes and the X chromosome. Here, we develop a novel method to estimate effective sex ratios or ESR (defined as the female proportion of the effective population) from allele count data for each branch of a rooted tree topology that summarizes the history of the populations of interest. Our method relies on Kimura's time-dependent diffusion approximation for genetic drift, and is based on a hierarchical Bayesian model to integrate over the allele frequencies along the branches. We show via simulations that parameters are inferred robustly, even under scenarios that violate some of the model assumptions. Analyzing bovine SNP data, we infer a strongly female-biased ESR in both dairy and beef cattle, as expected from the underlying breeding scheme. Conversely, we observe a strongly male-biased ESR in early domestication times, consistent with an easier taming and management of cows, and/or introgression from wild auroch males, that would both cause a relative increase in male effective population size. In humans, analyzing a subsample of non-African populations, we find a male-biased ESR in Oceanians that may reflect complex marriage patterns in Aboriginal Australians. Because our approach relies on allele count data, it may be applied on a wide range of species.
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Project description:There has been much recent excitement about the use of genetics to elucidate ancestral history and demography. Whole genome data from humans and other species are revealing complex stories of divergence and admixture that were left undiscovered by previous smaller data sets. A central challenge is to estimate the timing of past admixture and divergence events, for example the time at which Neanderthals exchanged genetic material with humans and the time at which modern humans left Africa. Here, we present a method for using sequence data to jointly estimate the timing and magnitude of past admixture events, along with population divergence times and changes in effective population size. We infer demography from a collection of pairwise sequence alignments by summarizing their length distribution of tracts of identity by state (IBS) and maximizing an analytic composite likelihood derived from a Markovian coalescent approximation. Recent gene flow between populations leaves behind long tracts of identity by descent (IBD), and these tracts give our method power by influencing the distribution of shared IBS tracts. In simulated data, we accurately infer the timing and strength of admixture events, population size changes, and divergence times over a variety of ancient and recent time scales. Using the same technique, we analyze deeply sequenced trio parents from the 1000 Genomes project. The data show evidence of extensive gene flow between Africa and Europe after the time of divergence as well as substructure and gene flow among ancestral hominids. In particular, we infer that recent African-European gene flow and ancient ghost admixture into Europe are both necessary to explain the spectrum of IBS sharing in the trios, rejecting simpler models that contain less population structure.
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Project description:BackgroundInference of population and species histories and population stratification using genetic data is important for discriminating between different speciation scenarios and for correct interpretation of genome scans for signs of adaptive evolution and trait association. Here we use data from 24 intronic loci re-sequenced in population samples of two closely related species, the pied flycatcher and the collared flycatcher.ResultsWe applied Isolation-Migration models, assignment analyses and estimated the genetic differentiation and diversity between species and between populations within species. The data indicate a divergence time between the species of <1 million years, significantly shorter than previous estimates using mtDNA, point to a scenario with unidirectional gene-flow from the pied flycatcher into the collared flycatcher and imply that barriers to hybridisation are still permeable in a recently established hybrid zone. Furthermore, we detect significant population stratification, predominantly between the Spanish population and other pied flycatcher populations.ConclusionsOur results provide further evidence for a divergence process where different genomic regions may be at different stages of speciation. We also conclude that forthcoming analyses of genotype-phenotype relations in these ecological model species should be designed to take population stratification into account.
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Project description:As one of the most commonly utilized organisms in the study of local adaptation, an accurate characterization of the demographic history of Drosophila melanogaster remains as an important research question. This owes both to the inherent interest in characterizing the population history of this model organism, as well as to the well-established importance of an accurate null demographic model for increasing power and decreasing false positive rates in genomic scans for positive selection. Although considerable attention has been afforded to this issue in non-African populations, less is known about the demographic history of African populations, including from the ancestral range of the species. While qualitative predictions and hypotheses have previously been forwarded, we here present a quantitative model fitting of the population history characterizing both the ancestral Zambian population range as well as the subsequently colonized west African populations, which themselves served as the source of multiple non-African colonization events. We here report the split time of the West African population at 72 kya, a date corresponding to human migration into this region as well as a period of climatic changes in the African continent. Furthermore, we have estimated population sizes at this split time. These parameter estimates thus represent an important null model for future investigations in to African and non-African D. melanogaster populations alike.
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Project description:Transposable elements (TEs) constitute a substantial fraction of the genomes of many species, and it is thus important to understand their population dynamics. The strength of natural selection against TEs is a key parameter in understanding these dynamics. In principle, the strength of selection can be inferred from the frequencies of a sample of TEs. However, complicated demographic histories, such as found in Drosophila melanogaster, could lead to a substantial distortion of the TE frequency distribution compared with that expected for a panmictic, constant-sized population. The current methodology for the estimation of selection intensity acting against TEs does not take into account demographic history and might generate erroneous estimates especially for TE families under weak selection. Here, we develop a flexible maximum likelihood methodology that explicitly accounts both for demographic history and for the ascertainment biases of identifying TEs. We apply this method to the newly generated frequency data of the BS family of non-long terminal repeat retrotransposons in D. melanogaster in concert with two recent models of the demographic history of the species to infer the intensity of selection against this family. We find the estimate to differ substantially compared with a prior estimate that was made assuming a model of constant population size. Further, we find there to be relatively little information about selection intensity present in the derived non-African frequency data and that the ancestral African subpopulation is much more informative in this respect. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for demographic history and bear on study design for the inference of selection coefficients generally.
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Project description:The evolution of a species depends on multiple forces, such as demography and natural selection. To understand the trajectory and driving forces of evolution of a target species, it is first necessary to uncover that species' population history, such as past and present population sizes, subdivision and gene flow, by using appropriate genetic markers. Cryptomeria japonica is a long-lived monoecious conifer species that is distributed in Japan. There are two main lines (omote-sugi and ura-sugi), which are distinguished by apparent differences in morphological traits that may have contributed to their local adaptation. The evolution of these morphological traits seems to be related to past climatic changes in East Asia, but no precise estimate is available for the divergence time of these two lines and the subsequent population dynamics in this species. Here, we analyzed the nucleotide variations at 120 nuclear genes in 94 individuals by using amplicon sequencing in combination with high-throughput sequencing technologies. Our analysis indicated that the population on Yakushima Island, the southern distribution limit of C. japonica in Japan, diverged from the other populations 0.85 million years ago (MYA). The divergence time of the other populations on mainland Japan was estimated to be 0.32 MYA suggesting that the divergence of omote-sugi and ura-sugi might have occurred before the last glacial maximum. Although we found modest levels of gene flow between the present populations, the long-term isolation and environmental heterogeneity caused by climatic changes might have contributed to the differentiation of the lines and their local adaptation.
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Project description:The cohabitation of Drosophila melanogaster with humans is nearly ubiquitous. Though it has been well established that this fly species originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and only recently has spread globally, many details of its swift expansion remain unclear. Elucidating the demographic history of D. melanogaster provides a unique opportunity to investigate how human movement might have impacted patterns of genetic diversity in a commensal species, as well as providing neutral null models for studies aimed at identifying genomic signatures of local adaptation. Here, we use whole-genome data from five populations (Africa, North America, Europe, Central Asia, and the South Pacific) to carry out demographic inferences, with particular attention to the inclusion of migration and admixture. We demonstrate the importance of these parameters for model fitting and show that how previous estimates of divergence times are likely to be significantly underestimated as a result of not including them. Finally, we discuss how human movement along early shipping routes might have shaped the present-day population structure of D. melanogaster.
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Project description:Selection, recombination, and the demographic history of a species can all have profound effects on genomewide patterns of variability. To assess the impact of these forces in the genome of Drosophila miranda, we examine polymorphism and divergence patterns at 62 loci scattered across the genome. In accordance with recent findings in D. melanogaster, we find that noncoding DNA generally evolves more slowly than synonymous sites, that the distribution of polymorphism frequencies in noncoding DNA is significantly skewed toward rare variants relative to synonymous sites, and that long introns evolve significantly slower than short introns or synonymous sites. These observations suggest that most noncoding DNA is functionally constrained and evolving under purifying selection. However, in contrast to findings in the D. melanogaster species group, we find little evidence of adaptive evolution acting on either coding or noncoding sequences in D. miranda. Levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in D. miranda are comparable to those observed in D. melanogaster, but vary considerably among chromosomes. These patterns suggest a significantly lower rate of recombination on autosomes, possibly due to the presence of polymorphic autosomal inversions and/or differences in chromosome sizes. All chromosomes show significant departures from the standard neutral model, including too much heterogeneity in synonymous site polymorphism relative to divergence among loci and a general excess of rare synonymous polymorphisms. These departures from neutral equilibrium expectations are discussed in the context of nonequilibrium models of demography and selection.
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Project description:Estimating the proportion of adaptive substitutions (α) is of primary importance to uncover the determinants of adaptation in comparative genomic studies. Several methods have been proposed to estimate α from patterns polymorphism and divergence in coding sequences. However, estimators of α can be biased when the underlying assumptions are not met. Here we focus on a potential source of bias, i.e. variation through time in the long-term population size (N) of the considered species. We show via simulations that ancient demographic fluctuations can generate severe overestimations of α, and this is irrespective of the recent population history.
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