Category Archives: mutation

Grasping gorgonians

Posted on 1 May, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

A recent issue of Heredity focused on the brave new world of environmental genomics. After highlighting the special issue, I started chatting to one of the contributors, Eric Pante and became interested in his work on gorgonians. Eric and his co-authors explored the … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, mutation, phylogenetics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Quantifying risks of consanguineous mating in humans

Posted on 30 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

The efficacy of selection in purging a deleterious mutation from a randomly mating population depends on numerous factors, including dominance effects of alleles – see my previous posts. Simplistically, most new mutations are expected to be heterozygotic, and be purged … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, mutation, pedigree, population genetics, selection, societal structure | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

dN(eutralist) < dS(electionist) Part 5

Posted on 16 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

The neutral theory predicts that species with small census (and effective) population sizes are subject to greater drift (or allele frequency fluctuations), and vice versa. In other words, species with larger population sizes are expected to maintain more neutral diversity … Continue reading →

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d(N)eutralist < d(S)electionist Part 4

Posted on 2 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Continuing our discussion of the neutralist-selectionist debate, recent findings by Schrider et al. (2015) bring us to the topic of selective sweeps, and their genomic signatures in a population. As we have discussed in previous posts, numerous studies (since the … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, mutation, population genetics, selection, theory | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

To sequence a genome or not to sequence a genome, that is the question

Posted on 16 Mar, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

In a paper out last month in the Journal of Phycology, Bhattacharya et al. (2015) provide a perspective on the need for more algal genomes. [A] relevant question on the minds of many phycologists might be: do we really need more algal … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, mutation, next generation sequencing, selection | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

dN(eutralist) > dS(electionist)? Part 2

Posted on 5 Mar, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Last week’s post dealt with the debate over differences in the efficacy of purifying selection across human genomes. This week, we’ll look at the differences in de novo mutation rates across populations. The human de novo mutation rate has gone … Continue reading →

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dN(eutralist) > dS(electionist)? Part 1

Posted on 26 Feb, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

In a new series of posts, I will now proffer neutralist and selectionist reviews of recent publications. I point readers to an excellent review of the debate by Masatoshi Nei (2005). Besides being a fun exercise in PoV’s, I hope … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, mutation, population genetics, theory | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Twice Mixed? Testing hypotheses of Neanderthal Introgression

Posted on 19 Feb, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Human migration in, and out of Africa was wrought with complex patterns of admixture (see my previous post summarizing the story so far). Of note were some recent findings on the disparity in amounts of Neanderthal introgression/ancestry between East Asians … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, mutation, Paleogenomics, population genetics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Genome-wide effects of artificial selection

Posted on 12 Feb, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Humans have been artificially selecting for favorable traits in crops, pets, and livestock over millennia. Years of theoretical predictions and experimental evolution studies have shown the detrimental effects of increased homozygosity, and the population-wide advantages of artificially maintaining heterozygosity. Two … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, methods, mutation, population genetics, theory | Leave a comment

Estimating the ticks and tocks of molecular clocks

Posted on 28 Jan, 2015 by Rob Denton

Like many undergraduate students, I learned about the linear, universal molecular clock: the homogeneous rate of nucleotide change over time. When I sat down to actually do analyses of molecular data, I was confounded by the array of options to treat DNA … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, Molecular Ecology, the journal, mutation, software | Tagged | Leave a comment