Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS
Volume 72, Issue 6, Pages 1527-1535Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/375657
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
One of the most striking findings to emerge from the study of genomic patterns of variation is that regions with lower recombination rates tend to have lower levels of intraspecific diversity but not of interspecies divergence. This uncoupling of variation within and between species has been widely interpreted as evidence that natural selection shapes patterns of genetic variability genomewide. We revisited the relationship between diversity, divergence, and recombination in humans, using data from closely related species and better estimates of recombination rates than previously available. We show that regions that experience less recombination have reduced divergence to chimpanzee and to baboon, as well as lower levels of diversity. This observation suggests that mutation and recombination are associated processes in humans, so that the positive correlation between diversity and recombination may have a purely neutral explanation. Consistent with this hypothesis, diversity levels no longer increase significantly with recombination rates after correction for divergence to chimpanzee.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available