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- Bitocchi, Elena, et al.
(författare)
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High Level of Nonsynonymous Changes in Common Bean Suggests That Selection under Domestication Increased Functional Diversity at Target Traits
- 2017
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Plant Science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-462X. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Crop species have been deeply affected by the domestication process, and there have been many efforts to identify selection signatures at the genome level. This knowledge will help geneticists to better understand the evolution of organisms, and at the same time, help breeders to implement successful breeding strategies. Here, we focused on domestication in the Mesoamerican gene pool of Phaseolus vulgaris by sequencing 49 gene fragments from a sample of 45 P. vulgaris wild and domesticated accessions, and as controls, two accessions each of the closely related species Phaseolus coccineus and Phaseolus dumosus. An excess of nonsynonymous mutations within the domesticated germplasm was found. Our data suggest that the cost of domestication alone cannot explain fully this finding. Indeed, the significantly higher frequency of polymorphisms in the coding regions observed only in the domesticated plants (compared to noncoding regions), the fact that these mutations were mostly nonsynonymous and appear to be recently derived mutations, and the investigations into the functions of their relative genes (responses to biotic and abiotic stresses), support a scenario that involves new functional mutations selected for adaptation during domestication. Moreover, consistent with this hypothesis, selection analysis and the possibility to compare data obtained for the same genes in different studies of varying sizes, data types, and methodologies allowed us to identify four genes that were strongly selected during domestication. Each selection candidate is involved in plant resistance/tolerance to abiotic stresses, such as heat, drought, and salinity. Overall, our study suggests that domestication acted to increase functional diversity at target loci, which probably controlled traits related to expansion and adaptation to new agro-ecological growing conditions.
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| 3. |
- Lewin, Harris A., et al.
(författare)
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The Earth BioGenome Project 2020 : Starting the clock
- 2022
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 119:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
- Smeds, Linnéa, 1985-
(författare)
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Conservation genomics in inbred Scandinavian wolves using bioinformatic methods
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- With the recent and unprecedented progress in retrieving DNA sequence information from a large number of individuals of any species, conservation genetic research has entered a new phase. Specifically, it has become possible to study how genomes of endangered species respond to reductions in population size. Using genomic and bioinformatic approaches, in this thesis I investigate the contemporary Scandinavian wolf population founded 40 years ago by only three individuals, after the original population had been extirpated some decades earlier. The origin of the founders has been the subject of controversy, so I aimed to trace their origin using first male-specific Y chromosome sequences, and then whole-genome sequence data. I compared Scandinavian wolves to wolves from the nearby Finnish-Russian population as well as to publicly available wolf and dog samples from around the northern hemisphere, and found that the Scandinavian founders shared Y-haplotypes only with Finnish wolves. Consistent with this observation, when assessing population structure on the genomic scale, founders clustered with Finnish and Russian wolves, and an admixture analysis showed no other ancestries, nor traces of introgression from dogs. Small populations tend to have less genetic variation than larger populations, which might reduce their adaptive potential and increase the risk for extinction. A common measure used to investigate the genetic health of small populations is the genetic load, which is the fitness reduction of individuals due to accumulation of deleterious variants. I assessed the genetic load in Scandinavian wolves, divided into the components masked load (comprised of deleterious mutations in heterozygous state) and realized load (comprised of deleterious mutations in homozygous state), using both putatively deleterious single nucleotides and structural variants. I found that the realized load increased with every generation of inbreeding but was alleviated after genetic rescue events when new immigrants entered the population. Finally, I searched for the genetic basis of cryptorchidism, a testis condition that results in lowered fertility and is thought to be related to inbreeding depression. The trait is likely highly polygenic and the fact that only one significant association (to a region on the X chromosome) was found can be explained by that the number of available samples was very low, as is inevitable for small populations. In conclusion, this thesis explores the origin and the genetic health status of a small and recently founded natural population, and gives insights into how patterns of genetic load are affected by inbreeding and genetic rescue.
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