Evolutionary Determinants of Genome-wide Nucleotide Composition

Overview

Journal Nat Ecol Evol

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Biology

Date 2018 Jan 3

PMID 29292397

Citations 84

Authors

Hongan Long

Way Sung

Sibel Kucukyildirim

Emily Williams

Samuel F Miller

Wanfeng Guo

Caitlyn Patterson

Colin Gregory

Chloe Strauss

Casey Stone

Cecile Berne

David Kysela

William R Shoemaker

Mario E Muscarella

Haiwei Luo

Jay T Lennon

Yves V Brun

Michael Lynch

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

One of the long-standing mysteries of evolutionary genomics is the source of the wide phylogenetic diversity in genome nucleotide composition (G + C versus A + T), which must be a consequence of interspecific differences in mutation bias, the efficiency of selection for different nucleotides or a combination of the two. We demonstrate that although genomic G + C composition is strongly driven by mutation bias, it is also substantially modified by direct selection and/or as a by-product of biased gene conversion. Moreover, G + C composition at fourfold redundant sites is consistently elevated above the neutral expectation-more so than for any other class of sites.

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