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The legacy of domestication: accumulation of deleterious mutations in the dog genome.
Journal article

The legacy of domestication: accumulation of deleterious mutations in the dog genome.

  • Cruz F Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Vilà C
  • Webster MT
  • 2008-08-12
Published in:
  • Molecular biology and evolution. - 2008
Alleles
Animals
Animals, Domestic
Cats
Dogs
Gene Frequency
Genetic Variation
Genome
Mutation
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Sequence Alignment
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Wolves
English Dogs exhibit more phenotypic variation than any other mammal and are affected by a wide variety of genetic diseases. However, the origin and genetic basis of this variation is still poorly understood. We examined the effect of domestication on the dog genome by comparison with its wild ancestor, the gray wolf. We compared variation in dog and wolf genes using whole-genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data. The d(N)/d(S) ratio (omega) was around 50% greater for SNPs found in dogs than in wolves, indicating that a higher proportion of nonsynonymous alleles segregate in dogs compared with nonfunctional genetic variation. We suggest that the majority of these alleles are slightly deleterious and that two main factors may have contributed to their increase. The first is a relaxation of selective constraint due to a population bottleneck and altered breeding patterns accompanying domestication. The second is a reduction of effective population size at loci linked to those under positive selection due to Hill-Robertson interference. An increase in slightly deleterious genetic variation could contribute to the prevalence of disease in modern dog breeds.
Language
  • English
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/99846
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