DNA damage repair system in C57BL/6 J mice is evolutionarily stable

BACKGROUND: DNA damage repair (DDR) system is vital in maintaining genome stability and survival. DDR consists of over 160 genes in 7 different pathways to repair specific type of DNA damage caused by external and internal damaging factors. The functional importance of DDR system implies that evolution could play important roles in maintaining its functional intactness to perform its function. Indeed, it has been observed that positive selection is present in BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA), which are key genes in homologous recombination pathway of DDR system, in the humans and its close relatives of chimpanzee and bonobos. Efforts have been made to investigate whether the same selection could exist for BRCA in other mammals but found no evidence so far. However, as most of the studies in non-human mammals analyzed only a single or few individuals in the studied species, the observation may not reflect the true status in the given species. Furthermore, few studies have studied evolution selection in other DDR genes except BRCA. In current study, we used laboratory mouse C57BL/6 J as a model to address evolution selection on DDR genes in non-primate mammals by dynamically monitoring genetic variation across 30 generations in C57BL/6 J. RESULTS: Using exome sequencing, we collected coding sequences of 169 DDR genes from 44 C57BL/6 J individual genomes in 2018. We compared the coding sequences with the mouse reference genome sequences derived from 1998 C57BL/6 J DNA, and with the mouse Eve6B reference genome sequences derived from 2003 C57BL/6 J DNA, covering 30 generations of C57BL/6 J from 1998 to 2018. We didn’t identify meaningful coding variation in either Brca1 or Brca2, or in 167 other DDR genes across the 30 generations. In the meantime, we did identify 812 coding variants in 116 non-DNA damage repair genes during the same period, which served as a quality control to validate the reliability of our analytic pipeline and the negative results in DDR genes. CONCLUSIONS: DDR genes in laboratory mouse strain C57BL/6 J were not under positive selection across its 30-generation period, highlighting the possibility that DDR system in rodents could be evolutionarily stable. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-021-07983-7.