Causes and consequences of crossing-over evidenced via a high-resolution recombinational landscape of the honey bee.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Social hymenoptera, the honey bee (Apis mellifera) in particular, have ultra-high crossover rates and a large degree of intra-genomic variation in crossover rates. Aligned with haploid genomics of males, this makes them a potential model for examining the causes and consequences of crossing over. To address why social insects have such high crossing-over rates and the consequences of this, we constructed a high-resolution recombination atlas by sequencing 55 individuals from three colonies with an average marker density of 314 bp/marker.

Results

We find crossing over to be especially high in proximity to genes upregulated in worker brains, but see no evidence for a coupling with immune-related functioning. We detect only a low rate of non-crossover gene conversion

SUBMITTER: Liu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4305242 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature