Altitudinal variation at duplicated β-globin genes in deer mice: effects of selection, recombination, and gene conversion.

ABSTRACT: Spatially varying selection on a given polymorphism is expected to produce a localized peak in the between-population component of nucleotide diversity, and theory suggests that the chromosomal extent of elevated differentiation may be enhanced in cases where tandemly linked genes contribute to fitness variation. An intriguing example is provided by the tandemly duplicated β-globin genes of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), which contribute to adaptive differentiation in blood-oxygen affinity between high- and low-altitude populations. Remarkably, the two β-globin genes segregate the same pair of functionally distinct alleles due to a history of interparalog gene conversion and alleles of the same functional type are in perfect coupling-phase linkage disequilibrium (LD). Here we report a

SUBMITTER: Storz JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3249357 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature