The DNA-binding protein PRDM9 has a critical role in specifying meiotic recombination hotspots in mice and apes, but appears to be absent from other vertebrate species, including birds. To study the evolution and determinants of recombination in species lacking PRDM9, we inferred fine-scale genetic maps from population resequencing data for two bird species, the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata and the long-tailed finch Poephila acuticauda. We find that both species have hotspots, which are enriched near functional genomic elements. Unlike in mice and apes, the two species share most hotspots, with conservation seemingly extending over tens of millions of years. These observations suggest that in the absence of PRDM9, recombination targets functional features that both enable access to the genome and constrain its evolution.

BackgroundTo date, exon capture has largely been restricted to species with fully sequenced genomes, which has precluded its application to lineages that lack high quality genomic resources. We developed a novel strategy for designing array-based exon capture in chipmunks (Tamias) based on de novo transcriptome assemblies. We evaluated the performance of our approach across specimens from four chipmunk species.ResultsWe selectively targeted 11,975 exons (~4 Mb) on custom capture arrays, and enriched over 99% of the targets in all libraries. The percentage of aligned reads was highly consistent (24.4-29.1%) across all specimens, including in multiplexing up to 20 barcoded individuals on a single array. Base coverage among specimens and within targets in each species library was uniform, and the performance of targets among independent exon captures was highly reproducible. There was no decrease in coverage among chipmunk species, which showed up to 1.5% sequence divergence in coding regions. We did observe a decline in capture performance of a subset of targets designed from a much more divergent ground squirrel genome (30 My), however, over 90% of the targets were also recovered. Final assemblies yielded over ten thousand orthologous loci (~3.6 Mb) with thousands of fixed and polymorphic SNPs among species identified.ConclusionsOur study demonstrates the potential of a transcriptome-enabled, multiplexed, exon capture method to create thousands of informative markers for population genomic and phylogenetic studies in non-model species across the tree of life.

Natural history collections are unparalleled repositories of geographical and temporal variation in faunal conditions. Molecular studies offer an opportunity to uncover much of this variation; however, genetic studies of historical museum specimens typically rely on extracting highly degraded and chemically modified DNA samples from skins, skulls or other dried samples. Despite this limitation, obtaining short fragments of DNA sequences using traditional PCR amplification of DNA has been the primary method for genetic study of historical specimens. Few laboratories have succeeded in obtaining genome-scale sequences from historical specimens and then only with considerable effort and cost. Here, we describe a low-cost approach using high-throughput next-generation sequencing to obtain reliable genome-scale sequence data from a traditionally preserved mammal skin and skull using a simple extraction protocol. We show that single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the genome sequences obtained independently from the skin and from the skull are highly repeatable compared to a reference genome.