Bottlenecks and selective sweeps during domestication have increased deleterious genetic variation in dogs.

ABSTRACT: Population bottlenecks, inbreeding, and artificial selection can all, in principle, influence levels of deleterious genetic variation. However, the relative importance of each of these effects on genome-wide patterns of deleterious variation remains controversial. Domestic and wild canids offer a powerful system to address the role of these factors in influencing deleterious variation because their history is dominated by known bottlenecks and intense artificial selection. Here, we assess genome-wide patterns of deleterious variation in 90 whole-genome sequences from breed dogs, village dogs, and gray wolves. We find that the ratio of amino acid changing heterozygosity to silent heterozygosity is higher in dogs than in wolves and, on average, dogs have 2-3% higher genetic load than gray wo

SUBMITTER: Marsden CD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4711855 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature