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.
Norwegian Consortium Assembles, Annotates Cod Genome from 454 Data
The cod is among the first vertebrates to have its genome assembled entirely from next-generation shotgun sequencing data. In a second project phase, which may also involve short-read sequencing technologies, the researchers plan to fill in gaps in the genome, improve the annotation, and sequence the transcriptomes and genomes of additional cod samples from different geographic areas.
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