Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

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National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20(112), p. 6413-6418, 2015

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1419306112

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Extreme selective sweeps independently targeted the X chromosomes of the great apes

Journal article published in 2015 by Krishna R. Veeramah, Kiwoong Nam, August E. Woerner, J. Prado-Martinez, P. H. Sudmant, J. M. Kidd, H. Li, J. L. Kelley, B. Lorente-Galdos, Kasper Munch, T. D. O'Connor, G. Santpere, A. Cagan, C. Theunert, F. Casals and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Significance The X chromosome has a different inheritance pattern from the autosomes, direct interaction and potential conflict with the Y chromosome, and fewer copies than the autosomes. Natural selection may, therefore, act differently on the X chromosome. We analyze polymorphism patterns in 10 great ape species using 87 high-coverage whole genomes. We find that the X chromosome contains megabase-sized regions that are almost without variation in most species. No such regions are found on the autosomes. We suggest that independent and very strong selective sweeps are the only plausible explanation for these observations, and we hypothesize that the targets of these sweeps are multicopy testis-expressed genes in a genetic conflict with the Y chromosome for transmission to the next generation.