Genomic evidence for inbreeding depression and purging of deleterious genetic variation in Indian tigers.

ABSTRACT: Increasing habitat fragmentation leads to wild populations becoming small, isolated, and threatened by inbreeding depression. However, small populations may be able to purge recessive deleterious alleles as they become expressed in homozygotes, thus reducing inbreeding depression and increasing population viability. We used whole-genome sequences from 57 tigers to estimate individual inbreeding and mutation load in a small-isolated and two large-connected populations in India. As expected, the small-isolated population had substantially higher average genomic inbreeding (F_ROH = 0.57) than the large-connected (F_ROH = 0.35 and F_ROH = 0.46) populations. The small-isolated population had the lowest loss-of-function mutation load, likely due

SUBMITTER: Khan A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8670471 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature