Dataset Information

Large-scale adaptive hitchhiking upon high recombination in Drosophila simulans.

ABSTRACT: Natural selection is expected to leave a characteristic footprint on neighboring nucleotide variation through the effects of genetic linkage. The size of the region affected is proportional to the strength of selection and greatly reduced with the recombinational distance from the selected site. Thus, the genomic footprint of selection is generally believed to be restricted to a small DNA stretch in normal and highly recombining regions. Here, we study the effect of selection on linked polymorphism (hitchhiking effect) by surveying nucleotide variation across a highly recombining approximately 88-kb genomic fragment in an African population of Drosophila simulans. We find a core region of up to 38 kb with a major haplotype at intermediate frequency. The extended haplotype structure that gradually vanishes until disappearing is unusual for a highly recombining region. Both the presence in the structured genomic domain of a single major haplotype depleted of variability and the detected spatial pattern of variation along the approximately 88-kb fragment are incompatible with neutral predictions in a panmictic population. A major role of demographic effects could also be discarded. The observed pattern of variation clearly provides evidence that directional selection has acted recently on this region, sweeping out variation around a strongly adaptive mutation. Our findings suggest a major role of positive selection in shaping DNA variability even in highly recombining regions.

SUBMITTER: Quesada H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1462778 | biostudies-other | 2003 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Large-scale adaptive hitchhiking upon high recombination in Drosophila simulans.

Quesada Humberto H Ramírez Ursula E M UE Rozas Julio J Aguadé Montserrat M

Genetics 20031001 2

Natural selection is expected to leave a characteristic footprint on neighboring nucleotide variation through the effects of genetic linkage. The size of the region affected is proportional to the strength of selection and greatly reduced with the recombinational distance from the selected site. Thus, the genomic footprint of selection is generally believed to be restricted to a small DNA stretch in normal and highly recombining regions. Here, we study the effect of selection on linked polymorph ...[more]

PMID: 14573496

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Project description:In Drosophila, multiple lines of evidence converge in suggesting that beneficial substitutions to the genome may be common. All suffer from confounding factors, however, such that the interpretation of the evidence-in particular, conclusions about the rate and strength of beneficial substitutions-remains tentative. Here, we use genome-wide polymorphism data in D. simulans and sequenced genomes of its close relatives to construct a readily interpretable characterization of the effects of positive selection: the shape of average neutral diversity around amino acid substitutions. As expected under recurrent selective sweeps, we find a trough in diversity levels around amino acid but not around synonymous substitutions, a distinctive pattern that is not expected under alternative models. This characterization is richer than previous approaches, which relied on limited summaries of the data (e.g., the slope of a scatter plot), and relates to underlying selection parameters in a straightforward way, allowing us to make more reliable inferences about the prevalence and strength of adaptation. Specifically, we develop a coalescent-based model for the shape of the entire curve and use it to infer adaptive parameters by maximum likelihood. Our inference suggests that ?13% of amino acid substitutions cause selective sweeps. Interestingly, it reveals two classes of beneficial fixations: a minority (approximately 3%) that appears to have had large selective effects and accounts for most of the reduction in diversity, and the remaining 10%, which seem to have had very weak selective effects. These estimates therefore help to reconcile the apparent conflict among previously published estimates of the strength of selection. More generally, our findings provide unequivocal evidence for strongly beneficial substitutions in Drosophila and illustrate how the rapidly accumulating genome-wide data can be leveraged to address enduring questions about the genetic basis of adaptation.

Dataset Information

Large-scale adaptive hitchhiking upon high recombination in Drosophila simulans.

Publications

Large-scale adaptive hitchhiking upon high recombination in Drosophila simulans.

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