Recent Activity in Expanding Populations and Purifying Selection Have Shaped Transposable Element Landscapes across Natural Accessions of the Mediterranean Grass Brachypodium distachyon.

ABSTRACT: Transposable element (TE) activity has emerged as a major cause of variation in genome size and structure among species. To what extent TEs contribute to genetic variation and divergence within species, however, is much less clear, mainly because population genomic data have so far only been available for the classical model organisms. In this study, we use the annual Mediterranean grass Brachypodium distachyon to investigate TE dynamics in natural populations. Using whole-genome sequencing data for 53 natural accessions, we identified more than 5,400 TE polymorphisms across the studied genomes. We found, first, that while population bottlenecks and expansions have shaped genetic diversity in B. distachyon, these events did not lead to lineage-specific activations of TE families, as observ

SUBMITTER: Stritt C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5786231 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature