The rate of adaptive evolution in animal mitochondria.

ABSTRACT: We have investigated whether there is adaptive evolution in mitochondrial DNA, using an extensive data set containing over 500 animal species from a wide range of taxonomic groups. We apply a variety of McDonald-Kreitman style methods to the data. We find that the evolution of mitochondrial DNA is dominated by slightly deleterious mutations, a finding which is supported by a number of previous studies. However, when we control for the presence of deleterious mutations using a new method, we find that mitochondria undergo a significant amount of adaptive evolution, with an estimated 26% (95% confidence intervals: 5.7-45%) of nonsynonymous substitutions fixed by adaptive evolution. We further find some weak evidence that the rate of adaptive evolution is correlated to synonymous diversity. W

SUBMITTER: James JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4737298 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature