Germline mutations are a driving force behind genome evolution and genetic disease. We investigated genome-wide mutation rates and spectra in multi-sibling families. Mutation rate increased with paternal age in all families, but the number of additional mutations per year differed more than two-fold between families. Meta-analysis of 6,570 mutations showed that germline methylation influences mutation rates. In contrast to somatic mutations, we found remarkable consistency of germline mutation spectra between the sexes and at different paternal ages. 3.8% of mutations were mosaic in the parental germline, resulting in 1.3% of mutations being shared between siblings. The number of these shared mutations varied significantly between families. Our data suggest that the mutation rate per cell division is higher during both early embryogenesis and differentiation of primordial germ cells, but is reduced substantially during post-pubertal spermatogenesis. These findings have important consequences for the recurrence risks of disorders caused by de novo mutations.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) has a significant genetic contribution that is incompletely characterized. To complement genome-wide association (GWA) studies, we conducted a large and systematic candidate gene study of CAD susceptibility, including analysis of many uncommon and functional variants. We examined 49,094 genetic variants in ∼2,100 genes of cardiovascular relevance, using a customised gene array in 15,596 CAD cases and 34,992 controls (11,202 cases and 30,733 controls of European descent; 4,394 cases and 4,259 controls of South Asian origin). We attempted to replicate putative novel associations in an additional 17,121 CAD cases and 40,473 controls. Potential mechanisms through which the novel variants could affect CAD risk were explored through association tests with vascular risk factors and gene expression. We confirmed associations of several previously known CAD susceptibility loci (eg, 9p21.3:p<10−33; LPA:p<10−19; 1p13.3:p<10−17) as well as three recently discovered loci (COL4A1/COL4A2, ZC3HC1, CYP17A1:p<5×10−7). However, we found essentially null results for most previously suggested CAD candidate genes. In our replication study of 24 promising common variants, we identified novel associations of variants in or near LIPA, IL5, TRIB1, and ABCG5/ABCG8, with per-allele odds ratios for CAD risk with each of the novel variants ranging from 1.06–1.09. Associations with variants at LIPA, TRIB1, and ABCG5/ABCG8 were supported by gene expression data or effects on lipid levels. Apart from the previously reported variants in LPA, none of the other ∼4,500 low frequency and functional variants showed a strong effect. Associations in South Asians did not differ appreciably from those in Europeans, except for 9p21.3 (per-allele odds ratio: 1.14 versus 1.27 respectively; P for heterogeneity = 0.003). This large-scale gene-centric analysis has identified several novel genes for CAD that relate to diverse biochemical and cellular functions and clarified the literature with regard to many previously suggested genes.

Abstract. We study the stochastic distribution of spectator fields predicted in different slow-roll inflation backgrounds. Spectator fields have a negligible energy density during inflation but may play an important dynamical role later, even giving rise to primordial density perturbations within our observational horizon today. During de-Sitter expansion there is an equilibrium solution for the spectator field which is often used to estimate the stochastic distribution during slow-roll inflation. However slow roll only requires that the Hubble rate varies slowly compared to the Hubble time, while the time taken for the stochastic distribution to evolve to the de-Sitter equilibrium solution can be much longer than a Hubble time. We study both chaotic (monomial) and plateau inflaton potentials, with quadratic, quartic and axionic spectator fields. We give an adiabaticity condition for the spectator field distribution to relax to the de-Sitter equilibrium, and find that the de-Sitter approximation is never a reliable estimate for the typical distribution at the end of inflation for a quadratic spectator during monomial inflation. The existence of an adiabatic regime at early times can erase the dependence on initial conditions of the final distribution of field values. In these cases, spectator fields acquire sub-Planckian expectation values. Otherwise spectator fields may acquire much larger field displacements than suggested by the de-Sitter equilibrium solution. We quantify the information about initial conditions that can be obtained from the final field distribution. Our results may have important consequences for the viability of spectator models for the origin of structure, such as the simplest curvaton models.

Both sequence variation and copy-number variation (CNV) of the genes encoding receptors for immunoglobulin G (Fcγ receptors) have been genetically and functionally associated with a number of autoimmune diseases. However, the molecular nature and evolutionary context of this variation is unknown. Here, we describe the structure of the CNV, estimate its mutation rate and diversity, and place it in the context of the known functional alloantigen variation of these genes. Deletion of Fcγ receptor IIIB, associated with systemic lupus erythematosus, is a result of independent nonallelic homologous recombination events with a frequency of approximately 0.1%. We also show that pathogen diversity, in particular helminth diversity, has played a critical role in shaping the functional variation at these genes both between mammalian species and between human populations. Positively selected amino acids are involved in the interaction with IgG and include some amino acids that are known polymorphic alloantigens in humans. This supports a genetic contribution to the hygiene hypothesis, which states that past evolution in the context of helminth diversity has left humans with an array of susceptibility alleles for autoimmune disease in the context of a helminth-free environment. This approach shows the link between pathogens and autoimmune disease at the genetic level and provides a strategy for interrogating the genetic variation underlying autoimmune-disease risk and infectious-disease susceptibility.

Beta-defensins are a family of multifunctional genes with roles in defense against pathogens, reproduction, and pigmentation. In humans, six beta-defensin genes are clustered in a repeated region which is copy-number variable (CNV) as a block, with a diploid copy number between 1 and 12. The role in host defense makes the evolutionary history of this CNV particularly interesting, because morbidity due to infectious disease is likely to have been an important selective force in human evolution, and to have varied between geographical locations. Here, we show CNV of the beta-defensin region in chimpanzees, and identify a beta-defensin block in the human lineage that contains rapidly evolving noncoding regulatory sequences. We also show that variation at one of these rapidly evolving sequences affects expression levels and cytokine responsiveness of DEFB103, a key inhibitor of influenza virus fusion at the cell surface. A worldwide analysis of beta-defensin CNV in 67 populations shows an unusually high frequency of high-DEFB103-expressing copies in East Asia, the geographical origin of historical and modern influenza epidemics, possibly as a result of selection for increased resistance to influenza in this region. Hum Mutat 32:743–750, 2011. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.