Chromosome-Scale Selective Sweeps and Genomic Diversity in C. elegans
Andersen, Gerke et al., Nature Genetics
Researchers at Princeton University and elsewhere discuss the effects of chromosome-scale selective sweeps on genomic diversity in Caenorhabditis elegans. Taking a high-throughput selective sequencing approach on a collection of 200 wild C. elegans strains, the team found that the nematode's "genome variation is dominated by a set of commonly shared haplotypes on four of its six chromosomes, each spanning many megabases." Further, the team reports on its population genetic modeling experiments, which showed that "this pattern was generated by chromosome-scale selective sweeps that have reduced variation worldwide; at least one of these sweeps probably occurred in the last few hundred years," it writes.
Have Your Browser Do All the Work
July 07, 2009
To make your browsing experience even better, Bitesize Bio's Nick Oswald names the top 10 Firefox add-ons for scientists that have surfaced since his original 2007 list. On it are the Wired marker which acts as a highlighter for Web pages; TimerFox, which lets you set an alarm in your browser window; and i-cite, which "mashes up content from PubMed, EBI, and Google Scholar," among other handy tools.