Long-term balancing selection drives evolution of immunity genes in Capsella.

ABSTRACT: Genetic drift is expected to remove polymorphism from populations over long periods of time, with the rate of polymorphism loss being accelerated when species experience strong reductions in population size. Adaptive forces that maintain genetic variation in populations, or balancing selection, might counteract this process. To understand the extent to which natural selection can drive the retention of genetic diversity, we document genomic variability after two parallel species-wide bottlenecks in the genus Capsella. We find that ancestral variation preferentially persists at immunity related loci, and that the same collection of alleles has been maintained in different lineages that have been separated for several million years. By reconstructing the evolution of the disease-relat

SUBMITTER: Koenig D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6426441 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature