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.
ABI Says SOLiD Found More Forms of Variation in HapMap than Illumina; No Formal Comparison Yet
According to Kevin McKernan, senior director of SOLiD scientific operations at ABI and the corresponding author of a recent Genome Research paper, he and his team were able to detect "more forms of variation" than the Illumina group with half the coverage, "perhaps not in number but in structural complexity."
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