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"EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY"
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Accidental Homo sapiens : genetics, behavior, and free will
\"Two leading scientists reveal how we became the amazing creatures we are--and help us understand the biology that makes human beings uniquely capable of choice.\"--Dust jacket flap.
Book
A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates
Comparative genomic analyses of primates offer considerable potential to define and understand the processes that mold, shape, and transform the human genome. However, primate taxonomy is both complex and controversial, with marginal unifying consensus of the evolutionary hierarchy of extant primate species. Here we provide new genomic sequence (~8 Mb) from 186 primates representing 61 (~90%) of the described genera, and we include outgroup species from Dermoptera, Scandentia, and Lagomorpha. The resultant phylogeny is exceptionally robust and illuminates events in primate evolution from ancient to recent, clarifying numerous taxonomic controversies and providing new data on human evolution. Ongoing speciation, reticulate evolution, ancient relic lineages, unequal rates of evolution, and disparate distributions of insertions/deletions among the reconstructed primate lineages are uncovered. Our resolution of the primate phylogeny provides an essential evolutionary framework with far-reaching applications including: human selection and adaptation, global emergence of zoonotic diseases, mammalian comparative genomics, primate taxonomy, and conservation of endangered species.
Journal Article
Identifying a High Fraction of the Human Genome to be under Selective Constraint Using GERP
Computational efforts to identify functional elements within genomes leverage comparative sequence information by looking for regions that exhibit evidence of selective constraint. One way of detecting constrained elements is to follow a bottom-up approach by computing constraint scores for individual positions of a multiple alignment and then defining constrained elements as segments of contiguous, highly scoring nucleotide positions. Here we present GERP++, a new tool that uses maximum likelihood evolutionary rate estimation for position-specific scoring and, in contrast to previous bottom-up methods, a novel dynamic programming approach to subsequently define constrained elements. GERP++ evaluates a richer set of candidate element breakpoints and ranks them based on statistical significance, eliminating the need for biased heuristic extension techniques. Using GERP++ we identify over 1.3 million constrained elements spanning over 7% of the human genome. We predict a higher fraction than earlier estimates largely due to the annotation of longer constrained elements, which improves one to one correspondence between predicted elements with known functional sequences. GERP++ is an efficient and effective tool to provide both nucleotide- and element-level constraint scores within deep multiple sequence alignments.
Journal Article
Evolution of Land and Life in Oman : an 800 Million Year Story
This book takes readers on a fascinating journey to discover the story of land and ancient life evolution in Oman since at least 800 million years ago. Oman is well known for its marvelous geology. What tectonics affected this part of the world and what organisms lived there ? How did the climate and life develop ? Did life forms become more complex and varied or become extinct and disappear forever ? The book thoroughly reconstructs this land and ancient life evolution and offers readers an understanding on how land, climate and life have proceeded and developed in Oman through the millions of years.
Book
Evidence That Mutation Is Universally Biased towards AT in Bacteria
Mutation is the engine that drives evolution and adaptation forward in that it generates the variation on which natural selection acts. Mutation is a random process that nevertheless occurs according to certain biases. Elucidating mutational biases and the way they vary across species and within genomes is crucial to understanding evolution and adaptation. Here we demonstrate that clonal pathogens that evolve under severely relaxed selection are uniquely suitable for studying mutational biases in bacteria. We estimate mutational patterns using sequence datasets from five such clonal pathogens belonging to four diverse bacterial clades that span most of the range of genomic nucleotide content. We demonstrate that across different types of sites and in all four clades mutation is consistently biased towards AT. This is true even in clades that have high genomic GC content. In all studied cases the mutational bias towards AT is primarily due to the high rate of C/G to T/A transitions. These results suggest that bacterial mutational biases are far less variable than previously thought. They further demonstrate that variation in nucleotide content cannot stem entirely from variation in mutational biases and that natural selection and/or a natural selection-like process such as biased gene conversion strongly affect nucleotide content.
Journal Article
Adaptations to Climate-Mediated Selective Pressures in Humans
Humans inhabit a remarkably diverse range of environments, and adaptation through natural selection has likely played a central role in the capacity to survive and thrive in extreme climates. Unlike numerous studies that used only population genetic data to search for evidence of selection, here we scan the human genome for selection signals by identifying the SNPs with the strongest correlations between allele frequencies and climate across 61 worldwide populations. We find a striking enrichment of genic and nonsynonymous SNPs relative to non-genic SNPs among those that are strongly correlated with these climate variables. Among the most extreme signals, several overlap with those from GWAS, including SNPs associated with pigmentation and autoimmune diseases. Further, we find an enrichment of strong signals in gene sets related to UV radiation, infection and immunity, and cancer. Our results imply that adaptations to climate shaped the spatial distribution of variation in humans.
Journal Article
Barcoding Nemo: DNA-Based Identifications for the Ornamental Fish Trade
Background: Trade in ornamental fishes represents, by far, the largest route for the importation of exotic vertebrates. There is growing pressure to regulate this trade with the goal of ensuring that species are sustainably harvested and that their point of origin is accurately reported. One important element of such regulation involves easy access to specimen identifications, a task that is currently difficult for all but specialists because of the large number of species involved. The present study represents an important first step in making identifications more accessible by assembling a DNA barcode reference sequence library for nearly half of the ornamental fish species imported into North America. Methodology/Principal Findings: Analysis of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene from 391 species from 8 coral reef locations revealed that 98% of these species exhibit distinct barcode clusters, allowing their unambiguous identification. Most species showed little intra-specific variation (adjusted mean = 0.21%), but nine species included two or three lineages showing much more divergence (2.19–6.52%) and likely represent overlooked species complexes. By contrast, three genera contained a species pair or triad that lacked barcode divergence, cases that may reflect hybridization, young taxa or taxonomic over-splitting. Conclusions/Significance: Although incomplete, this barcode library already provides a new species identification tool for the ornamental fish industry, opening a realm of applications linked to collection practices, regulatory control and conservation.
Journal Article