Biomedical subjects

Joanna L Kelley

Publications and source records attributed to Joanna L Kelley.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2026

Bridging the gap between legacy polymerase chain reaction-based microsatellite data with high-throughput sequencing data for conservation genomics.

Microsatellites are powerful markers for tracking genetic variation in wildlife populations due to their high polymorphism and genome-wide abundance. While polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based fragment size analysis has been the standard for genotyping microsatellites, high-throughput sequencing offers greater resolution and the opportunity to sync historical datasets with modern analyses. We evaluated how genotypes from whole-genome sequencing align with PCR data for 15 microsatellite loci in 11 North American brown bears (Ursus arctos). Brown bear populations in the 48 contiguous United States have declined from approximately 50,000 to fewer than 2,000 over the past decades. Their endangered status has prompted extensive research and genetic monitoring, yielding large, multiyear microsatellite datasets upon which future conservation efforts can build. We achieved an overall microsatellite genotype concordance rate of 94.5% comparing high-throughput sequencing results to PCR based-fragment size results. All discrepancies occurred at complex loci containing multiple insertions and/or deletions (indels). Physically linked indels or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) occurring within the loci were misinterpreted as independent insertions, underscoring the need for genotyping tools that incorporate phasing when genotyping. To evaluate coverage effects, we downsampled high-throughput sequence data from 30x to 2x. Concordance remained high at 20 to 30x but dropped sharply at 10x, with 5x and 2x having discordant genotypes or insufficient coverage for genotyping. Accurate genotyping required both sufficient depth and number of reads spanning the entire repeat regions. Our results show that short-read whole-genome sequencing can recover microsatellite genotypes with high accuracy when paired with careful variant interpretation. By aligning historical PCR datasets with modern sequencing data, we can preserve decades of genetic insight and strengthen long-term monitoring of at-risk populations.

Animals↗

PubMed2025

Temperature and Pressure Shaped the Evolution of Antifreeze Proteins in Polar and Deep Sea Zoarcoid Fishes.

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) have enabled teleost fishes to repeatedly colonize polar seas. Four AFP types have convergently evolved in several fish lineages. AFPs inhibit ice crystal growth and lower tissue freezing point. In lineages with AFPs, species inhabiting colder environments may possess more AFP copies. Elucidating how differences in AFP copy number evolve is challenging due to the genes' tandem array structure and consequently poor resolution of these repetitive regions. Here, we explore the evolution of type III AFPs (AFP III) in the globally distributed suborder Zoarcoidei, leveraging six new long-read genome assemblies. Zoarcoidei has fewer genomic resources relative to other polar fish clades while it is one of the few groups of fishes adapted to both the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Combining these new assemblies with additional long-read genomes available for Zoarcoidei, we conducted a comprehensive phylogenetic test of AFP III evolution and modeled the effects of thermal habitat and depth on AFP III gene family evolution. We confirm a single origin of AFP III via neofunctionalization of the enzyme sialic acid synthase B. We also show that AFP copy number increased under low temperature but decreased with depth, potentially because pressure lowers freezing point. Associations between the environment and AFP III copy number were driven by duplications of paralogs that were translocated out of the ancestral locus at which AFP III arose. Our results reveal novel environmental effects on AFP evolution and demonstrate the value of high-quality genomic resources for studying how structural genomic variation shapes convergent adaptation.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Genomic signatures of positive selection in humans and the limits of outlier approaches.

Identifying regions of the human genome that have been targets of positive selection will provide important insights into recent human evolutionary history and may facilitate the search for complex disease genes. However, the confounding effects of population demographic history and selection on patterns of genetic variation complicate inferences of selection when a small number of loci are studied. To this end, identifying outlier loci from empirical genome-wide distributions of genetic variation is a promising strategy to detect targets of selection. Here, we evaluate the power and efficiency of a simple outlier approach and describe a genome-wide scan for positive selection using a dense catalog of 1.58 million SNPs that were genotyped in three human populations. In total, we analyzed 14,589 genes, 385 of which possess patterns of genetic variation consistent with the hypothesis of positive selection. Furthermore, several extended genomic regions were found, spanning >500 kb, that contained multiple contiguous candidate selection genes. More generally, these data provide important practical insights into the limits of outlier approaches in genome-wide scans for selection, provide strong candidate selection genes to study in greater detail, and may have important implications for disease related research.

Genome, Human↗

PubMed2005

Adaptive evolution in the SRZ chemoreceptor families of Caenorhabditis elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae.

We investigated the possibility of positive selection acting on members of the putative seven-pass chemoreceptor superfamily in Caenorhabditis elegans, which comprises approximately 1,300 genes encoding seven-pass G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Using a maximum-likelihood approach, we conducted statistical tests for evidence of codon sites where the ratio of nonsynonymous substitutions per nonsynonymous site to synonymous substitutions per synonymous site (d(N)/d(S)) was >1. Evidence for positive selection was found only for the srz family, about which virtually nothing specific is known. We extended the annotation of the srz gene family, establishing gene models for 60 srz genes in C. elegans and 28 srz genes in Caenorhabditis briggsae. d(N)/d(S) ratios varied dramatically in different regions of the SRZ proteins, peaking in predicted extracellular regions. These regions included 23 sites where evidence of positive selection was highly significant, corresponding remarkably well with regions implicated in ligand binding in other GPCR family members. We interpret these results as indicating that the srz family is under positive selection, probably driven by ligand binding.

Adaptation, Physiological↗