Segregation distortion in chicken and the evolutionary consequences of female meiotic drive in birds

Axelsson, Erik; Albrechtsen, Anders; van, A P; Li, Lili; Megens, Hendrik‐Jan; Vereijken, Addie; Crooijmans, R.P.M.A.; Groenen, Martien A. M.; Ellegren, Hans; Willerslev, Eske; Nielsen, Rasmus

doi:10.1038/hdy.2009.193

Cited by 34 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Currently, our knowledge of the distribution of meiotic drivers and their fitness effects is very incomplete and is likely biased toward the overrepresentation of strong drivers with extreme fitness effects. However, there is mounting evidence supporting the existence of subtle transmission ratio distorters (e.g., Zöllner et al 2004;Reed et al 2005;Aparicio et al 2010;Axelsson et al 2010) (however, the mechanism of distortion in these cases is often unknown). Similarly, although there is ample evidence that the recombination rate, as well as the strength and direction of heterochiasmy, varies across species, few allelic variants that influence sex-specific recombination rates have been identified.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scrambling Eggs: Meiotic Drive and the Evolution of Female Recombination Rates

2012

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Theories to explain the prevalence of sex and recombination have long been a central theme of evolutionary biology. Yet despite decades of attention dedicated to the evolution of sex and recombination, the widespread pattern of sex differences in the recombination rate is not well understood and has received relatively little theoretical attention. Here, we argue that female meiotic drivers-alleles that increase in frequency by exploiting the asymmetric cell division of oogenesis-present a potent selective pressure favoring the modification of the female recombination rate. Because recombination plays a central role in shaping patterns of variation within and among dyads, modifiers of the female recombination rate can function as potent suppressors or enhancers of female meiotic drive. We show that when female recombination modifiers are unlinked to female drivers, recombination modifiers that suppress harmful female drive can spread. By contrast, a recombination modifier tightly linked to a driver can increase in frequency by enhancing female drive. Our results predict that rapidly evolving female recombination rates, particularly around centromeres, should be a common outcome of meiotic drive. We discuss how selection to modify the efficacy of meiotic drive may contribute to commonly observed patterns of sex differences in recombination.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scrambling Eggs: Meiotic Drive and the Evolution of Female Recombination Rates

2012

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“…Similar actions are suggested for other speciation genes 13 . There is evidence for segregation distortion in chicken chromosomes involving loci with centromeric or telomeric locations 28 . The genomic distribution of divergence peaks in flycatchers is compatible with an involvement of telomeres as well, as some chromosomes showed divergence signals in both ends.…”

Section: Research Lettermentioning

confidence: 99%

The genomic landscape of species divergence in Ficedula flycatchers

Ellegren

Smeds

Burri

et al. 2012

Nature

596

733

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Unravelling the genomic landscape of divergence between lineages is key to understanding speciation 1 . The naturally hybridizing collared flycatcher and pied flycatcher are important avian speciation models 2-7 that show pre-as well as postzygotic isolation 8,9 . We sequenced and assembled the 1.1-Gb flycatcher genome, physically mapped the assembly to chromosomes using a low-density linkage map 10 and re-sequenced population samples of each species. Here we show that the genomic landscape of species differentiation is highly heterogeneous with approximately 50 'divergence islands' showing up to 50-fold higher sequence divergence than the genomic background. These non-randomly distributed islands, with between one and three regions of elevated divergence per chromosome irrespective of chromosome size, are characterized by reduced levels of nucleotide diversity, skewed allele-frequency spectra, elevated levels of linkage disequilibrium and reduced proportions of shared polymorphisms in both species, indicative of parallel episodes of selection. Proximity of divergence peaks to genomic regions resistant to sequence assembly, potentially including centromeres and telomeres, indicate that complex repeat structures may drive species divergence. A much higher background level of species divergence of the Z chromosome, and a lower proportion of shared polymorphisms, indicate that sex chromosomes and autosomes are at different stages of speciation. This study provides a roadmap to the emerging field of speciation genomics.As lineages diverge, a combination of pre-as well as postzygotic reproductive isolation barriers will eventually arise 1 . Divergence is likely to start from specific loci that may precede and cause the evolution of reproductive incompatibility. Hybridization between diverging lineages may therefore create a genomic mosaic of regions where interspecific gene flow occurs at different rates (the genic view of speciation 11 ), with introgression expected to be weak in genomic regions involved in speciation. Revealing the genomic regions with elevated levels of divergence will eventually deepen our knowledge of the speciation process. However, more than 150 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species 12 , the genetic basis of speciation is still largely unresolved 13,14 . We know little about the identity, number and effect size of loci involved in population divergence, their genomic distribution and the type of mutations involved. Advances in sequencing technology now open a promising avenue for the study of genomic divergence, even for non-model vertebrate species with gigabase (Gb)-sized genomes.The collared flycatcher Ficedula albicollis and the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca (Fig. 1) are important study organisms for key aspects of evolutionary ecology and biology 2-7 . Diverged less than 2 million years ago, their history has been shaped by repeated cycles of glaciation in Eurasia where periods of allopatric divergence in refugia probably alternated with periods of secondary contact...

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“…Genomic techniques are now opening new avenues for detecting drive. For example, a recent study in chickens using genome-wide approaches revealed previously undetected drive around the centromere and telomeres of chromosome 1 (55), as predicted by the centric drive model. Such genome-wide approaches are likely to uncover many more examples of drive in the near future.…”

Section: Types Of Sges and Their Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selfish genetic elements, genetic conflict, and evolutionary innovation

Werren

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

387

373

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Genomes are vulnerable to selfish genetic elements (SGEs), which enhance their own transmission relative to the rest of an individual's genome but are neutral or harmful to the individual as a whole. As a result, genetic conflict occurs between SGEs and other genetic elements in the genome. There is growing evidence that SGEs, and the resulting genetic conflict, are an important motor for evolutionary change and innovation. In this review, the kinds of SGEs and their evolutionary consequences are described, including how these elements shape basic biological features, such as genome structure and gene regulation, evolution of new genes, origin of new species, and mechanisms of sex determination and development. The dynamics of SGEs are also considered, including possible "evolutionary functions" of SGEs.

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Segregation distortion in chicken and the evolutionary consequences of female meiotic drive in birds

Cited by 34 publications

References 39 publications

Scrambling Eggs: Meiotic Drive and the Evolution of Female Recombination Rates

Scrambling Eggs: Meiotic Drive and the Evolution of Female Recombination Rates

The genomic landscape of species divergence in Ficedula flycatchers

Selfish genetic elements, genetic conflict, and evolutionary innovation

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