Biomedical subjects

Matthew T Webster

Publications and source records attributed to Matthew T Webster.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2025

Genetic mapping in the red mason bee implicates ANTSR as an ancient sex-determining locus in bees and ants.

Haplodiploid inheritance, in which females are diploid and males are haploid, is found in all species of Hymenoptera. Sex in haplodiploids is commonly determined by the alleles present at a complementary sex determination (CSD) locus, with heterozygosity triggering the female developmental pathway. The identity of this locus differs among taxa and is only known in a few species. Here, we map a single CSD locus to a 2 kbp region in the genome of the red mason bee Osmia bicornis. It overlaps the long noncoding RNA ANTSR, which has been identified as the sex-determining gene in the invasive ant Linepithema humile. This locus is homozygous in diploid males and exhibits extremely high levels of haplotype diversity, consistent with the action of frequency-dependent selection. The elevated levels of heterozygosity in the CSD locus enable us to fine-map potentially functional genetic variation within it. We also identify elevated levels of genetic diversity in the ortholog of the CSD locus in five other bee and ant genera, suggesting that it may govern sex determination widely in Hymenoptera. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that ANTSR evolved a role in sex determination over 150 million years ago and is the ancestral sex-determination locus of bees and ants.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication.

The domestication of dogs caused a dramatic change in their way of life compared with that of their ancestor, the gray wolf. We hypothesize that this new life style changed the selective forces that acted upon the species, which in turn had an effect on the dog's genome. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial DNA genome in 14 dogs, six wolves, and three coyotes. Here we show that dogs have accumulated nonsynonymous changes in mitochondrial genes at a faster rate than wolves, leading to elevated levels of variation in their proteins. This suggests that a major consequence of domestication in dogs was a general relaxation of selective constraint on their mitochondrial genome. If this change also affected other parts of the dog genome, it could have facilitated the generation of novel functional genetic diversity. This diversity could thus have contributed raw material upon which artificial selection has shaped modern breeds and may therefore be an important source of the extreme phenotypic variation present in modern-day dogs.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Strong regional biases in nucleotide substitution in the chicken genome.

Interspersed repeats have emerged as a valuable tool for studying neutral patterns of molecular evolution. Here we analyze variation in the rate and pattern of nucleotide substitution across all autosomes in the chicken genome by comparing the present-day CR1 repeat sequences with their ancestral copies and reconstructing nucleotide substitutions with a maximum likelihood model. The results shed light on the origin and evolution of large-scale heterogeneity in GC content found in the genomes of birds and mammals--the isochore structure. In contrast to mammals, where GC content is becoming homogenized, heterogeneity in GC content is being reinforced in the chicken genome. This is also supported by patterns of substitution inferred from alignments of introns in chicken, turkey, and quail. Analysis of individual substitution frequencies is consistent with the biased gene conversion (BGC) model of isochore evolution, and it is likely that patterns of evolution in the chicken genome closely resemble those in the ancestral amniote genome, when it is inferred that isochores originated. Microchromosomes and distal regions of macrochromosomes are found to have elevated substitution rates and a more GC-biased pattern of nucleotide substitution. This can largely be accounted for by a strong correlation between GC content and the rate and pattern of substitution. The results suggest that an interaction between increased mutability at CpG motifs and fixation biases due to BGC could explain increased levels of divergence in GC-rich regions.

Alu Elements↗

PubMed2005

Contrasting patterns of polymorphism and divergence on the Z chromosome and autosomes in two Ficedula flycatcher species.

In geographic areas where pied and collared flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca and F. albicollis) breed in sympatry, hybridization occurs, leading to gene flow (introgression) between the two recently diverged species. Notably, while such introgression is observable at autosomal loci it is apparently absent at the Z chromosome, suggesting an important role for genes on the Z chromosome in creating reproductive isolation during speciation. To further understand the role of Z-linked loci in the formation of new species, we studied genetic variation of the two species from regions where they live in allopatry. We analyzed patterns of polymorphism and divergence in introns from 9 Z-linked and 23 autosomal genes in pied and collared flycatcher males. Average variation on the Z chromosome is greatly reduced compared to neutral expectations based on autosomal diversity in both species. We also observe significant heterogeneity between patterns of polymorphism and divergence at Z-linked loci and a relative absence of polymorphisms that are shared by the two species on the Z chromosome compared to the autosomes. We suggest that these observations may indicate the action of recurrent selective sweeps on the Z chromosome during the evolution of the two species, which may be caused by sexual selection acting on Z-linked genes. Alternatively, reduced variation on the Z chromosome could result from substantially higher levels of introgression at autosomal than at Z-linked loci or from a complex demographic history, such as a population bottleneck.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Male-driven biased gene conversion governs the evolution of base composition in human alu repeats.

Regional biases in substitution pattern are likely to be responsible for the large-scale variation in base composition observed in vertebrate genomes. However, the evolutionary forces responsible for these biases are still not clearly defined. In order to study the processes of mutation and fixation across the entire human genome, we analyzed patterns of substitution in Alu repeats since their insertion. We also studied patterns of human polymorphism within the repeats. There is a highly significant effect of recombination rate on the pattern of substitution, whereas no such effect is seen on the pattern of polymorphism. These results suggest that regional biases in substitution are caused by biased gene conversion, a process that increases the probability of fixation of mutations that increase GC content. Furthermore, the strongest correlate of substitution patterns is found to be male recombination rates rather than female or sex-averaged recombination rates. This indicates that in addition to sexual dimorphism in recombination rates, the sexes also differ in the relative rates of crossover and gene conversion.

Alu Elements↗

PubMed2005

Why are young and old repetitive elements distributed differently in the human genome?

Alu elements are not distributed homogeneously throughout the human genome: old elements are preferentially found in the GC-rich parts of the genome, while young Alus are more often found in the GC-poor parts of the genome. The process giving rise to this differential distribution remains poorly understood. Here we investigate whether this pattern could be due to a preferential degradation of Alu elements integrated in GC-poor regions by small indel mutations. We aligned 5.1 Mb of human and chimpanzee sequences and examined whether the rate of insertion and deletion inside Alu elements differed according to the base composition surrounding them. We found that Alu elements are not preferentially degraded in GC-poor regions by indel events. We also looked at whether very young L1 elements show the same change in distribution compared to older ones. This analysis indicated that L1 elements also show a shift in their distribution, although we could not assess it as precisely as for Alu elements. We propose that the differential distribution of Alu elements is likely to be due to a change in their pattern of insertion or their probability of fixation through evolutionary time.

Alu Elements↗

PubMed2004

Comparison of the chicken and turkey genomes reveals a higher rate of nucleotide divergence on microchromosomes than macrochromosomes.

A distinctive feature of the avian genome is the large heterogeneity in the size of chromosomes, which are usually classified into a small number of macrochromosomes and numerous microchromosomes. These chromosome classes show characteristic differences in a number of interrelated features that could potentially affect the rate of sequence evolution, such as GC content, gene density, and recombination rate. We studied the effects of these factors by analyzing patterns of nucleotide substitution in two sets of chicken-turkey sequence alignments. First, in a set of 67 orthologous introns, divergence was significantly higher in microchromosomes (chromosomes 11-38; 11.7% divergence) than in both macrochromosomes (chromosomes 1-5; 9.9% divergence; P = 0.016) and intermediate-sized chromosomes (chromosomes 6-10; 9.5% divergence; P = 0.026). At least part of this difference was due to the higher incidence of CpG sites on microchromosomes. Second, using 155 orthologous coding sequences we noted a similar pattern, in which synonymous substitution rates on microchromosomes (13.1%) were significantly higher than were rates on macrochromosomes (10.3%; P = 0.024). Broadly assuming neutrality of introns and synonymous sites, or constraints on such sequences do not differ between chromosomal classes, these observations imply that microchromosomal genes are exposed to more germ line mutations than those on other chromosomes. We also find that dN/dS ratios for genes located on microchromosomes (average, 0.094) are significantly lower than those of macrochromosomes (average, 0.185; P = 0.025), suggesting that the proteins of genes on microchromosomes are under greater evolutionary constraint.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Gene expression, synteny, and local similarity in human noncoding mutation rates.

The human genome is organized with regard to many features such as isochores, Giemsa bands, clusters of genes with similar expression patterns, and contiguous regions with shared evolutionary histories (synteny blocks). In addition to these genomic features, it is clear that mutation rates also vary across the human genome. To address how mutation rates and genomic features are related, we analyzed substitution rates at three classes of putatively neutral noncoding sites (nongenic, intronic, and ancestral repeats) in approximately 14 Mb of human-chimpanzee alignments covering human chromosome 7. Patterns of mutation rate variation inferred from substitution rate variation differ among the three site classes. In particular, we find that intronic mutation rates are strongly affected by the breadth of expression of the genes in which they reside, with broadly expressed genes exhibiting low mutation rates, probably as a consequence of the transcription-coupled repair process acting in the germ line. All site classes show significant local similarities in mutation rate at the megabase scale, and regional similarities in nongenic mutation rate covary with blocks of synteny between the human and mouse genomes, indicating that the evolutionary history of a genomic region is an important determinant of mutation rate.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Fixation biases affecting human SNPs.

Under neutrality all classes of mutation have an equal probability of becoming fixed in a population. In this article, we describe our analysis of the frequency distributions of >5000 human SNPs and provide evident of biases in the process of fixation of certain classes of point mutation that are most likely to be attributable to biased gene conversion. The results indicate an increased fixation probability of mutations that result in the incorporation of a GC base pair. Furthermore, in transcribed regions this process exhibits strand asymmetry, and is biased towards preserving a G base on the coding strand. Biased gene conversion has the potential to explain both existence of isochores and the compositional asymmetry in mammalian transcribed regions.

Alleles↗

PubMed2004

Reduced variation on the chicken Z chromosome.

Understanding the population genetic factors that shape genome variability is pivotal to the design and interpretation of studies using large-scale polymorphism data. We analyzed patterns of polymorphism and divergence at Z-linked and autosomal loci in the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) to study the influence of mutation, effective population size, selection, and demography on levels of genetic diversity. A total of 14 autosomal introns (8316 bp) and 13 Z-linked introns (6856 bp) were sequenced in 50 chicken chromosomes from 10 highly divergent breeds. Genetic variation was significantly lower at Z-linked than at autosomal loci, with one segregating site every 39 bp at autosomal loci (theta(W) = 5.8 +/- 0.8 x 10(-3)) and one every 156 bp on the Z chromosome (theta(W) = 1.4 +/- 0.4 x 10(-3)). This difference may in part be due to a low male effective population size arising from skewed reproductive success among males, evident both in the wild ancestor-the red jungle fowl-and in poultry breeding. However, this effect cannot entirely explain the observed three- to fourfold reduction in Z chromosome diversity. Selection, in particular selective sweeps, may therefore have had an impact on reducing variation on the Z chromosome, a hypothesis supported by the observation of heterogeneity in diversity levels among loci on the Z chromosome and the lower recombination rate on Z than on autosomes. Selection on sex-linked genes may be particularly important in organisms with female heterogamety since the heritability of sex-linked sexually antagonistic alleles advantageous to males is improved when fathers pass a Z chromosome to their sons.

Alleles↗

PubMed2003

Common 5' beta-globin RFLP haplotypes harbour a surprising level of ancestral sequence mosaicism.

Blocks of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the human genome represent segments of ancestral chromosomes. To investigate the relationship between LD and genealogy, we analysed diversity associated with restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) haplotypes of the 5' beta-globin gene complex. Genealogical analyses were based on sequence alleles that spanned a 12.2-kb interval, covering 3.1 kb around the psibeta gene and 6.2 kb of the delta-globin gene and its 5' flanking sequence known as the R/T region. Diversity was sampled from a Kenyan Luo population where recent malarial selection has contributed to substantial LD. A single common sequence allele spanning the 12.2-kb interval exclusively identified the ancestral chromosome bearing the "Bantu" beta(s) (sickle-cell) RFLP haplotype. Other common 5' RFLP haplotypes comprised interspersed segments from multiple ancestral chromosomes. Nucleotide diversity was similar between psibeta and R/T-delta-globin but was non-uniformly distributed within the R/T-delta-globin region. High diversity associated with the 5' R/T identified two ancestral lineages that probably date back more than 2 million years. Within this genealogy, variation has been introduced into the 3' R/T by gene conversion from other ancestral chromosomes. Diversity in delta-globin was found to lead through parts of the main genealogy but to coalesce in a more recent ancestor. The well-known recombination hotspot is clearly restricted to the region 3' of delta-globin. Our analyses show that, whereas one common haplotype in a block of high LD represents a long segment from a single ancestral chromosome, others are mosaics of short segments from multiple ancestors related in genealogies of unsuspected complexity.

Alleles↗

PubMed2003

Mutation rate variation in the mammalian genome.

Recent advances in the large-scale sequencing of mammalian genomes have provided a means to study divergence in not only genic sequences but also in the non-coding bulk of DNA. There is evidence of significant variation in the levels of divergence between presumably neutral regions, pointing at an underlying variation in the rate of mutation across the genome. Apparently, such variation occurs on different scales, including sequence context effects (the influence of neighboring nucleotides on the rate of mutation at individual sites), variation within chromosomes (on the scales of kilobases as well as megabases), and between chromosomes (among autosomes as well as between autosomes and sex chromosomes). An important aspect for further research in this area is to study whether there is an ultimate evolutionary explanation for mutation rate variation within mammalian genomes.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Is the rate of insertion and deletion mutation male biased?: Molecular evolutionary analysis of avian and primate sex chromosome sequences.

The rate of mutation for nucleotide substitution is generally higher among males than among females, likely owing to the larger number of DNA replications in spermatogenesis than in oogenesis. For insertion and deletion (indel) mutations, data from a few human genetic disease loci indicate that the two sexes may mutate at similar rates, possibly because such mutations arise in connection with meiotic crossing over. To address origin- and sex-specific rates of indel mutation we have conducted the first large-scale molecular evolutionary analysis of indels in noncoding DNA sequences from sex chromosomes. The rates are similar on the X and Y chromosomes of primates but about twice as high on the avian Z chromosome as on the W chromosome. The fact that indels are not uncommon on the nonrecombining Y and W chromosomes excludes meiotic crossing over as the main cause of indel mutation. On the other hand, the similar rates on X and Y indicate that the number of DNA replications (higher for Y than for X) is also not the main factor. Our observations are therefore consistent with a role of both DNA replication and recombination in the generation of short insertion and deletion mutations. A significant excess of deletion compared to insertion events is observed on the avian W chromosome, consistent with gradual DNA loss on a nonrecombining chromosome.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

A low rate of simultaneous double-nucleotide mutations in primates.

The occurrence of double-nucleotide (doublet) mutations is contrary to the normal assumption that point mutations affect single nucleotides. Here we develop a new method for estimating the doublet mutation rate and apply it to more than a megabase of human-chimpanzee-baboon genomic DNA alignments and more than a million human single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The new method accounts for the effect of regional variation in evolutionary rates, which may be a confounding factor in previous estimates of the doublet mutation rate. Furthermore we determine sequence context effects by using sequence comparisons over a variety of lineage lengths. This approach yields a new estimate of the doublet mutation rate of 0.3% of the singleton rate, indicating that doublet mutations are far rarer than previously thought. Our results suggest that doublet mutations are unlikely to have caused the correlation between synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution rates in mammals, and also show that regional variation and sequence context effects play an important role in primate DNA sequence evolution.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Compositional evolution of noncoding DNA in the human and chimpanzee genomes.

We have examined the compositional evolution of noncoding DNA in the primate genome by comparison of lineage-specific substitutions observed in 1.8 Mb of genomic alignments of human, chimpanzee, and baboon with 6542 human single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rooted using chimpanzee sequence. The pattern of compositional evolution, measured in terms of the numbers of GC-->AT and AT-->GC changes, differs significantly between fixed and polymorphic sites, and indicates that there is a bias toward fixation of AT-->GC mutations, which could result from weak directional selection or biased gene conversion in favor of high GC content. Comparison of the frequency distributions of a subset of the SNPs revealed no significant difference between GC-->AT and AT-->GC polymorphisms, although AT-->GC polymorphisms in regions of high GC segregate at slightly higher frequencies on average than GC-->AT polymorphisms, which is consistent with a fixation bias favoring high GC in these regions. However, the substitution data suggest that this fixation bias is relatively weak, because the compositional structure of the human and chimpanzee genomes is becoming homogenized, with regions of high GC decreasing in GC content and regions of low GC increasing in GC content. The rate and pattern of nucleotide substitution in 333 Alu repeats within the human-chimpanzee-baboon alignments are not significantly affected by the GC content of the region in which they are inserted, providing further evidence that, since the time of the human-chimpanzee ancestor, there has been little or no regional variation in mutation bias.

Alleles↗

PubMed2002

Microsatellite evolution inferred from human-chimpanzee genomic sequence alignments.

Most studies of microsatellite evolution utilize long, highly mutable loci, which are unrepresentative of the majority of simple repeats in the human genome. Here we use an unbiased sample of 2,467 microsatellite loci derived from alignments of 5.1 Mb of genomic sequence from human and chimpanzee to investigate the mutation process of tandemly repetitive DNA. The results indicate that the process of microsatellite evolution is highly heterogeneous, exhibiting differences between loci of different lengths and motif sizes and between species. We find a highly significant tendency for human dinucleotide repeats to be longer than their orthologues in chimpanzees, whereas the opposite trend is observed in mononucleotide repeat arrays. Furthermore, the rate of divergence between orthologues is significantly higher at longer loci, which also show significantly greater mutability per repeat number. These observations have important consequences for understanding the molecular mechanisms of microsatellite mutation and for the development of improved measures of genetic distance.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Analysis of variation in the human beta-globin gene cluster using a novel DHPLC technique.

We have implemented a technique combining allele-specific PCR (AS-PCR) and denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) to identify new polymorphic variants within an intergenic region in the beta-globin cluster. This technique is applicable to the detection of new variants in genomic regions where variation is apportioned into distinct classes of haplotype. Duplexes for DHPLC analysis were created by denaturation and re-annealing of a mixture of two AS-PCR products of known and unknown sequence from the same haplotypic class, permitting detection of new haplotypes in each class. A 454bp fragment 3.5kb 5' to the human delta-globin gene, which may have a gene regulatory function, was analysed in 840 chromosomes from a global sampling of human populations using this method. Two divergent haplotypes were found to predominate in all populations studied, possibly as a result of balancing selection.

Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid↗

PubMed2002

Deterministic mutation rate variation in the human genome.

Several studies of substitution rate variation have indicated that the local mutation rate varies over the mammalian genome. In the present study, we show significant variation in substitution rates within the noncoding part of the human genome using 4.7 Mb of human-chimpanzee pairwise comparisons. Moreover, we find a significant positive covariation of lineage-specific chimpanzee and human local substitution rates, and very similar mean substitution rates down the two lineages. The substitution rate variation is probably not caused by selection or biased gene conversion, and so we conclude that mutation rates vary deterministically across the noncoding nonrepetitive regions of the human genome. We also show that noncoding substitution rates are significantly affected by G+C base composition, partly because the base composition is not at equilibrium.

Amino Acid Substitution↗