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Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes

Evolutionary theory predicts that the lack of recombination and chromosomal re-assortment in strictly asexual organisms results in homologous chromosomes irreversibly accumulating mutations and thus evolving independently of each other, a phenomenon termed the Meselson effect. We apply a population...

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Autores principales: Weir, William, Capewell, Paul, Foth, Bernardo, Clucas, Caroline, Pountain, Andrew, Steketee, Pieter, Veitch, Nicola, Koffi, Mathurin, De Meeûs, Thierry, Kaboré, Jacques, Camara, Mamadou, Cooper, Anneli, Tait, Andy, Jamonneau, Vincent, Bucheton, Bruno, Berriman, Matt, MacLeod, Annette
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26809473
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11473
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author Weir, William
Capewell, Paul
Foth, Bernardo
Clucas, Caroline
Pountain, Andrew
Steketee, Pieter
Veitch, Nicola
Koffi, Mathurin
De Meeûs, Thierry
Kaboré, Jacques
Camara, Mamadou
Cooper, Anneli
Tait, Andy
Jamonneau, Vincent
Bucheton, Bruno
Berriman, Matt
MacLeod, Annette
author_facet Weir, William
Capewell, Paul
Foth, Bernardo
Clucas, Caroline
Pountain, Andrew
Steketee, Pieter
Veitch, Nicola
Koffi, Mathurin
De Meeûs, Thierry
Kaboré, Jacques
Camara, Mamadou
Cooper, Anneli
Tait, Andy
Jamonneau, Vincent
Bucheton, Bruno
Berriman, Matt
MacLeod, Annette
author_sort Weir, William
collection PubMed
description Evolutionary theory predicts that the lack of recombination and chromosomal re-assortment in strictly asexual organisms results in homologous chromosomes irreversibly accumulating mutations and thus evolving independently of each other, a phenomenon termed the Meselson effect. We apply a population genomics approach to examine this effect in an important human pathogen, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. We determine that T.b. gambiense is evolving strictly asexually and is derived from a single progenitor, which emerged within the last 10,000 years. We demonstrate the Meselson effect for the first time at the genome-wide level in any organism and show large regions of loss of heterozygosity, which we hypothesise to be a short-term compensatory mechanism for counteracting deleterious mutations. Our study sheds new light on the genomic and evolutionary consequences of strict asexuality, which this pathogen uses as it exploits a new biological niche, the human population. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11473.001
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spelling pubmed-47397712016-02-05 Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes Weir, William Capewell, Paul Foth, Bernardo Clucas, Caroline Pountain, Andrew Steketee, Pieter Veitch, Nicola Koffi, Mathurin De Meeûs, Thierry Kaboré, Jacques Camara, Mamadou Cooper, Anneli Tait, Andy Jamonneau, Vincent Bucheton, Bruno Berriman, Matt MacLeod, Annette eLife Genomics and Evolutionary Biology Evolutionary theory predicts that the lack of recombination and chromosomal re-assortment in strictly asexual organisms results in homologous chromosomes irreversibly accumulating mutations and thus evolving independently of each other, a phenomenon termed the Meselson effect. We apply a population genomics approach to examine this effect in an important human pathogen, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. We determine that T.b. gambiense is evolving strictly asexually and is derived from a single progenitor, which emerged within the last 10,000 years. We demonstrate the Meselson effect for the first time at the genome-wide level in any organism and show large regions of loss of heterozygosity, which we hypothesise to be a short-term compensatory mechanism for counteracting deleterious mutations. Our study sheds new light on the genomic and evolutionary consequences of strict asexuality, which this pathogen uses as it exploits a new biological niche, the human population. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11473.001 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2016-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4739771/ /pubmed/26809473 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11473 Text en © 2015, Weir et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Genomics and Evolutionary Biology
Weir, William
Capewell, Paul
Foth, Bernardo
Clucas, Caroline
Pountain, Andrew
Steketee, Pieter
Veitch, Nicola
Koffi, Mathurin
De Meeûs, Thierry
Kaboré, Jacques
Camara, Mamadou
Cooper, Anneli
Tait, Andy
Jamonneau, Vincent
Bucheton, Bruno
Berriman, Matt
MacLeod, Annette
Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title_full Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title_fullStr Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title_full_unstemmed Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title_short Population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
title_sort population genomics reveals the origin and asexual evolution of human infective trypanosomes
topic Genomics and Evolutionary Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26809473
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11473
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