scholarly journals Modelling single nucleotide effects in phosphoglucose isomerase on dispersal in the Glanville fritillary butterfly: coupling of ecological and evolutionary dynamics

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1523) ◽  
pp. 1519-1532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaozhi Zheng ◽  
Otso Ovaskainen ◽  
Ilkka Hanski

Dispersal comprises a complex life-history syndrome that influences the demographic dynamics of especially those species that live in fragmented landscapes, the structure of which may in turn be expected to impose selection on dispersal. We have constructed an individual-based evolutionary sexual model of dispersal for species occurring as metapopulations in habitat patch networks. The model assumes correlated random walk dispersal with edge-mediated behaviour (habitat selection) and spatially correlated stochastic local dynamics. The model is parametrized with extensive data for the Glanville fritillary butterfly. Based on empirical results for a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the phosphoglucose isomerase ( Pgi ) gene, we assume that dispersal rate in the landscape matrix, fecundity and survival are affected by a locus with two alleles, A and C, individuals with the C allele being more mobile. The model was successfully tested with two independent empirical datasets on spatial variation in Pgi allele frequency. First, at the level of local populations, the frequency of the C allele is the highest in newly established isolated populations and the lowest in old isolated populations. Second, at the level of sub-networks with dissimilar numbers and connectivities of patches, the frequency of C increases with decreasing network size and hence with decreasing average metapopulation size. The frequency of C is the highest in landscapes where local extinction risk is high and where there are abundant opportunities to establish new populations. Our results indicate that the strength of the coupling of the ecological and evolutionary dynamics depends on the spatial scale and is asymmetric, demographic dynamics having a greater immediate impact on genetic dynamics than vice versa.

Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 808
Author(s):  
Laura Pérez-Lago ◽  
Teresa Aldámiz-Echevarría ◽  
Rita García-Martínez ◽  
Leire Pérez-Latorre ◽  
Marta Herranz ◽  
...  

A successful Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variant, B.1.1.7, has recently been reported in the UK, causing global alarm. Most likely, the new variant emerged in a persistently infected patient, justifying a special focus on these cases. Our aim in this study was to explore certain clinical profiles involving severe immunosuppression that may help explain the prolonged persistence of viable viruses. We present three severely immunosuppressed cases (A, B, and C) with a history of lymphoma and prolonged SARS-CoV-2 shedding (2, 4, and 6 months), two of whom finally died. Whole-genome sequencing of 9 and 10 specimens from Cases A and B revealed extensive within-patient acquisition of diversity, 12 and 28 new single nucleotide polymorphisms, respectively, which suggests ongoing SARS-CoV-2 replication. This diversity was not observed for Case C after analysing 5 sequential nasopharyngeal specimens and one plasma specimen, and was only observed in one bronchoaspirate specimen, although viral viability was still considered based on constant low Ct values throughout the disease and recovery of the virus in cell cultures. The acquired viral diversity in Cases A and B followed different dynamics. For Case A, new single nucleotide polymorphisms were quickly fixed (13–15 days) after emerging as minority variants, while for Case B, higher diversity was observed at a slower emergence: fixation pace (1–2 months). Slower SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary pace was observed for Case A following the administration of hyperimmune plasma. This work adds knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 prolonged shedding in severely immunocompromised patients and demonstrates viral viability, noteworthy acquired intra-patient diversity, and different SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary dynamics in persistent cases.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laith N. AL-Eitan ◽  
Doaa M. Rababa’h ◽  
Nancy M. Hakooz ◽  
Mansour A. Alghamdi ◽  
Rana B. Dajani

Several genetic variants have been identified that cause variation among different populations and even within individuals of a similar descent. This leads to interindividual variations in the optimal dose of the drug that is required to sustain the treatment efficiency. In this study, 56 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within several pharmacogenes were analyzed in 128 unrelated subjects from a genetically isolated group of Circassian people living in Jordan. We also compared these variant distributions to other ethnic groups that are available at two databases (Genome 1000 and eXAC). Our results revealed that the distribution of allele frequencies within genes among Circassians in Jordan showed similarities and disparities when compared to other populations. This study provides a powerful base for clinically relevant SNPs to enhance medical research and future pharmacogenomic studies. Rare variants detected in isolated populations can significantly guide to novel loci involved in the development of clinically relevant traits.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong-Yin Zhou ◽  
Hang Liu ◽  
Yue-Dong Zhang ◽  
Yin-Qiao Wu ◽  
Min-Sheng Peng ◽  
...  

AbstractUnderstanding the mutational and evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 is essential for treating COVID-19 and the development of a vaccine. Here, we analyzed publicly available 15,818 assembled SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, along with 2,350 raw sequence datasets sampled worldwide. We investigated the distribution of inter-host single nucleotide polymorphisms (inter-host SNPs) and intra-host single nucleotide variations (iSNVs). Mutations have been observed at 35.6% (10,649/29,903) of the bases in the genome. The substitution rate in some protein coding regions is higher than the average in SARS-CoV-2 viruses, and the high substitution rate in some regions might be driven to escape immune recognition by diversifying selection. Both recurrent mutations and human-to-human transmission are mechanisms that generate fitness advantageous mutations. Furthermore, the frequency of three mutations (S protein, F400L; ORF3a protein, T164I; and ORF1a protein, Q6383H) has gradual increased over time on lineages, which provides new clues for the early detection of fitness advantageous mutations. Our study provides theoretical support for vaccine development and the optimization of treatment for COVID-19. We call researchers to submit raw sequence data to public databases.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle F. DiLeo ◽  
Arild Husby ◽  
Marjo Saastamoinen

AbstractThere is now clear evidence that species across a broad range of taxa harbour extensive heritable variation in dispersal. While studies suggest that this variation can facilitate demographic outcomes such as range expansion and invasions, few have considered the consequences of intraspecific variation in dispersal for the maintenance and distribution of genetic variation across fragmented landscapes. Here we examine how landscape characteristics and individual variation in dispersal combine to predict genetic structure using genomic and spatial data from the Glanville fritillary butterfly. We used linear and latent factor mixed models to identify the landscape features that best predict spatial sorting of alleles in the dispersal-related gene phosphoglucose isomerase (Pgi). We next used structural equation modeling to test if variation in Pgi mediated gene flow as measured by Fst at putatively neutral loci. In a year when the population was expanding following a large decline, individuals with a genotype associated with greater dispersal ability were found at significantly higher frequencies in populations isolated by water and forest, and these populations showed lower levels of genetic differentiation at neutral loci. These relationships disappeared in the next year when metapopulation density was high, suggesting that the effects of individual variation are context dependent. Together our results highlight that 1) more complex aspects of landscape structure beyond just the configuration of habitat can be important for maintaining spatial variation in dispersal traits, and 2) that individual variation in dispersal plays a key role in maintaining genetic variation across fragmented landscapes.Impact summaryUnderstanding how fragmentation affects dispersal and gene flow across human-modified landscapes has long been a goal in evolutionary biology. It is typically assumed that individuals of the same species respond to the landscape in the same way, however growing evidence suggests that individuals can vary considerably in their dispersal traits. While the effects of this individual dispersal variation on range expansions and invasions have been well-characterized, knowledge of how it might mediate genetic responses to landscape fragmentation are almost entirely lacking. Here we demonstrate that individual variation in dispersal is key to the maintenance of genetic variation during a population expansion following a large decline in a butterfly metapopulation. We further show that spatial variation in dispersal is not maintained by the configuration of habitat patches alone, but by a more complex genotype-environment interaction involving the landscape matrix (i.e. landscape features found between habitat patches). This challenges the simplified landscape representations typically used in studies of dispersal evolution that ignore heterogeneity in the landscape matrix. More broadly, our results highlight the interplay of adaptive and neutral processes across fragmented landscapes, suggesting that an understanding of species vulnerability to landscape fragmentation requires consideration of both.


Author(s):  
Richard Frankham ◽  
Jonathan D. Ballou ◽  
Katherine Ralls ◽  
Mark D. B. Eldridge ◽  
Michele R. Dudash ◽  
...  

Inbreeding reduces survival and reproduction (i.e. it causes inbreeding depression), and thereby increases extinction risk. Inbreeding depression is due to increased homozygosity for harmful alleles and at loci exhibiting heterozygote advantage. Inbreeding depression is nearly universal in sexually reproducing organisms that are diploid or have higher ploidies. Impacts of inbreeding are generally greater in species that naturally outbreed than those that inbreed, in stressful than benign environments, and for fitness than peripheral traits. Harmful effects accumulate across the life cycle, resulting in devastating effects on total fitness in outbreeding species.Species face ubiquitous environmental change and must adapt or they will go extinct. Genetic diversity is the raw material required for evolutionary adaptation. However, loss of genetic diversity is unavoidable in small isolated populations, diminishing their capacity to evolve in response to environmental changes, and thereby increasing extinction risk.


Author(s):  
Donald M. Waller ◽  
Lukas F. Keller

Inbreeding (also referred to as “consanguinity”) occurs when mates are related to each other due to incest, assortative mating, small population size, or population sub-structuring. Inbreeding results in an excess of homozygotes and hence a deficiency of heterozygotes. This, in turn, exposes recessive genetic variation otherwise hidden by heterozygosity with dominant alleles relative to random mating. Interest in inbreeding arose from its use in animal and plant breeding programs to expose such variation and to fix variants in genetically homogenous lines. Starting with Gregor Mendel’s experiments with peas, geneticists have widely exploited inbreeding as a research tool, leading R. C. Lewontin to conclude that “Every discovery in classical and population genetics has depended on some sort of inbreeding experiment” (see Lewontin’s 1965 article “The Theory of Inbreeding.” Science 150:1800–1801). Charles Darwin wrote an entire book on the effects of inbreeding as measured in fifty-two taxa of plants. He and others noted that most plants and animals go to great length to avoid inbreeding, suggesting that inbreeding has high costs that often outweigh the benefits of inbreeding. Benefits of inbreeding include increased genetic transmission while the costs of inbreeding manifest as inbreeding depression when deleterious, mostly recessive alleles otherwise hidden as heterozygotes emerge in homozygote form upon inbreeding. Inbreeding also reduces fitness when heterozygotes are more fit than both homozygotes, but such overdominance is rare. Recurrent mutation continuously generates deleterious recessive alleles that create a genetic “load” of deleterious mutations mostly hidden within heterozygotes in outcrossing populations. Upon inbreeding, the load is expressed when deleterious alleles segregate as homozygotes, causing often substantial inbreeding depression. Although inbreeding alone does not change allele frequencies, it does redistribute genetic variation, reducing it within families or populations while increasing it among families or populations. Inbreeding also increases selection by exposing deleterious recessive mutations, a process called purging that can deplete genetic variation. For all these reasons, inbreeding is a central concept in evolutionary biology. Inbreeding is also central to conservation biology as small and isolated populations become prone to inbreeding and thus suffer inbreeding depression. Inbreeding can reduce population viability and increase extinction risk by reducing individual survival and/or reproduction. Such effects can often be reversed, however, by introducing new genetic material that re-establishes heterozygosity (“genetic rescue”). The current availability of DNA sequence and expression data is now allowing more detailed analyses of the causes and evolutionary consequences of inbreeding.


2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1727) ◽  
pp. 349-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan W. Kelly ◽  
Eric Sanford ◽  
Richard K. Grosberg

The extent to which acclimation and genetic adaptation might buffer natural populations against climate change is largely unknown. Most models predicting biological responses to environmental change assume that species' climatic envelopes are homogeneous both in space and time. Although recent discussions have questioned this assumption, few empirical studies have characterized intraspecific patterns of genetic variation in traits directly related to environmental tolerance limits. We test the extent of such variation in the broadly distributed tidepool copepod Tigriopus californicus using laboratory rearing and selection experiments to quantify thermal tolerance and scope for adaptation in eight populations spanning more than 17° of latitude. Tigriopus californicus exhibit striking local adaptation to temperature, with less than 1 per cent of the total quantitative variance for thermal tolerance partitioned within populations. Moreover, heat-tolerant phenotypes observed in low-latitude populations cannot be achieved in high-latitude populations, either through acclimation or 10 generations of strong selection. Finally, in four populations there was no increase in thermal tolerance between generations 5 and 10 of selection, suggesting that standing variation had already been depleted. Thus, plasticity and adaptation appear to have limited capacity to buffer these isolated populations against further increases in temperature. Our results suggest that models assuming a uniform climatic envelope may greatly underestimate extinction risk in species with strong local adaptation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naofumi Yoshida ◽  
Shin-Ichi Morinaga ◽  
Takeshi Wakamiya ◽  
Yuu Ishii ◽  
Shosei Kubota ◽  
...  

Abstract Adaptive divergence would occur even between the insufficiently isolated populations when there is a great difference in the environments of their habitats. The individuals present in the intermediate zone of the two divergent populations are expected to have an admixed genetic structure due to gene flow. A selective pressure that acts on the genetically admixed individuals may limit the gene flow and promote the adaptive divergence. Here, we addressed a question whether the selection occurs in the genetically admixed individuals between the divergent populations and assessed its effects on the population divergence. We obtained the whole-genome sequences of a perennial montane plant, Arabidopsis halleri, which has clear phenotypic dimorphisms between altitudes, along an altitudinal gradient of 359–1,317 m with a high spatial resolution (mean altitudinal interval of 20 m). We found the zone where the highland and lowland genes were mixing. Using the FST approach, we found that 35 and 13 genes in the admixed zone had a high frequency of alleles that are accumulated in highland and lowland subpopulations, respectively, suggesting that these genes have been selected in the admixed zone. This selection might limit the gene flow and contribute to the adaptive divergence along the altitudes. In the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based analysis, 3,000 out of 27,792 Altitude-Dependent SNPs had extremely high homozygosity in the admixed zone. In 84.7% of these SNPs, the frequency of homozygotes of highland alleles was comparable to that of lowland alleles, suggesting that these alleles are neutral but the heterozygotes were selectively eliminated. The distribution of highland and lowland alleles of these SNPs was not clearly separated between altitudes, implying that such selection did not impede the gene flow. We conclude that the selection occurring at the intermediate altitude affects the genetic structure in the admixed zone and adaptive divergence along the altitudes.


Author(s):  
Richard Frankham ◽  
Jonathan D. Ballou ◽  
Katherine Ralls ◽  
Mark Eldridge ◽  
Michele R. Dudash ◽  
...  

The biological diversity of the planet is being rapidly depleted due to the direct and indirect consequences of human activity. As the size of animal and plant populations decrease and fragmentation increases, loss of genetic diversity reduces their ability to adapt to changes in the environment, with inbreeding and reduced fitness inevitable consequences for many species. Many small isolated populations are going extinct unnecessarily. In many cases, such populations can be genetically rescued by gene flow into them from another population within the species, but this is very rarely done. This novel and authoritative book addresses the issues involved in genetic management of fragmented animal and plant populations, including inbreeding depression, loss of genetic diversity and elevated extinction risk in small isolated populations, augmentation of gene flow, genetic rescue, causes of outbreeding depression and predicting its occurrence, desirability and implementation of genetic translocations to cope with climate change, and defining and diagnosing species for conservation purposes.


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