Comparative analysis reveals signatures of differentiation amid genomic polymorphism in Lake Malawi cichlids.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cichlid fish from East Africa are remarkable for phenotypic and behavioral diversity on a backdrop of genomic similarity. In 2006, the Joint Genome Institute completed low coverage survey sequencing of the genomes of five phenotypically and ecologically diverse Lake Malawi species. We report a computational and comparative analysis of these data that provides insight into the mechanisms that make closely related species different from one another.

Results

We produced assemblies for the five species ranging in aggregate length from 68 to 79 megabase pairs, identified putative orthologs for more than 12,000 human genes, and predicted more than 32,000 cross-species single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Nucleotide diversity was lower than that found among laboratory

SUBMITTER: Loh YH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2530870 | biostudies-literature | 2008

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature