Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:1122-1127 (2002)
© 2002 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
Recombination or Mutational Hot Spots in Human mtDNA?
Molecular and Computational Biology, University of Southern California
| Abstract |
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Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
| Introduction |
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The claim that there may be recombination in human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith 1999
Because incompatibilities can be created by recurrent mutation as well as by recombination, it is necessary to rule out the former explanation in order to conclude that the latter is correct. Eyre-Walker, Smith, and Maynard Smith (1999)
argued that, given what is known about mutation rates, there were simply too many homoplasies in the data for multiple mutations to be the explanation. Clearly, such an argument is always dependent on what is assumed about mutation rates. Recognizing this weakness, Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
proposed a much simpler test that seemingly involves fewer assumptions (we will discuss the extent to which this is true later). Their test looks at the spatial behavior of a statistic of association between the alleles at pairs of polymorphic sites. Such associations, also known as "linkage disequilibrium" (LD), will decay as a result of recombination or recurrent mutation. The rationale behind the proposed test is that because the frequency of recombination increases with physical distance, the strength of association should go down with distance. In contrast, the probability of recurrent mutation on either site should be independent of the distance between the sites. Thus, if the strength of association is negatively correlated with distance, we may conclude that recombination is responsible. Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
, 2000)
found such a correlation and established its significance by means of a permutation test.
The study of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
was immediately challenged on two major grounds:
- Errors in data. Kivisild and Villems (2000)
showed that several of the polymorphisms analyzed by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
were likely to be the result of errors in genotyping or data handling (or both). The same point had previously been made by Macaulay, Richards, and Sykes (1999)
in response to Eyre-Walker, Smith, and Maynard Smith (1999)
.
- The choice of LD statistic. Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (2000)
used the squared correlation coefficient, r2 (Hill and Robertson 1968
); several researchers argued that they should have used |D'| (Lewontin 1964
) instead, because the latter is less dependent on allele frequencies than the former (Jorde and Bamshad 2000
; Kumar et al. 2000
).
The argument about the choice of LD statistic is equally unconvincing. Leaving aside the issue of what it means for one LD statistic to be less frequency dependent than another (Lewontin 1988
; Nordborg and Tavaré 2002
), it is, as Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (2000)
noted, hard to see why frequency dependence should matter. Under the null hypothesis that there is no recombination in mtDNA, there is a single underlying genealogical tree relating all mtDNA copies, and the distribution of allele frequencies must be the same for all sites (modulo differences in the mutation rate). In any case, the argument of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
was that r2 is not expected to decay with distance unless there is recombination; therefore, the observed decay implies recombination. This argument is not contradicted by the finding that some other statistic which might also be expected to decay with distance does not appear to do so.
In this article, we address two questions. First, in general, is the permutation test proposed by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
really a robust test of recombination or are there alternative explanations for patterns such as those observed? Second, what explains the pattern they observed; in particular, what explains the discrepancy between their results and those of subsequent studies that have found no evidence for recombination (Ingman et al. 2000
; Elson et al. 2001
)?
| Does a Decay of LD Imply Recombination? |
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The test proposed by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
An example should make this clearer. Consider a chromosome that is divided into two regions, one of which contains multiple mutational hot spots. Because multiple mutations erode LD, LD between pairs of loci in this "hot" region will be much lower than LD between pairs of loci in the "cold" (nonhot spot) region. Significantly, LD between pairs of loci in different regions (one hot, one cold) will also be low. Because the distance between loci in different regions is on an average greater than the distance between loci in the same region, the result is a pattern where high LD is associated with short distance. Thus, as illustrated in figure 1
, mutational hot spots can give rise to a pattern where LD decays with distance, just like the one observed by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
. If their test were used in such a case, we would falsely conclude that recombination was responsible for the pattern.
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| Should We Expect LD to Decay in mtDNA? |
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We have seen that mutational hot spots can, in principle, give rise to a negative correlation between LD and distance. Should we expect such a pattern in human mtDNA? The existence of mutational hot spots in mtDNA is not in doubt. Figure 2 shows the spatial pattern of pairs of sites that show evidence of either recombination or recurrent mutation. Such plots can be used to look for traces of recombination as well as mutational hot spots (Jakobsen and Easteal 1996
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However, even though hot spots exist, they do not appear to be as extreme as those assumed in the example of the previous section (see Does a Decay of LD Imply Recombination?). In that example, r2 was low for all pairs of loci that included at least one hot site (see fig. 1 ) and very high only for pairs of cold sites. The most complete mtDNA data set is that of Ingman et al. (2000)
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| What Explains the Discrepancy Between Different Studies? |
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Although mutational hot spots can, in principle, generate a negative correlation between LD and distance, they do not appear to do so in human mtDNA, at least not on a chromosome-wide scale. We are left with the question of why Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
To understand the reason for the discrepancy, we compared the data of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
with those of Ingman et al. (2000)
. Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
) found 49 synonymous informative sites in their data set of 45 nearly complete mtDNA sequences (table 1
). More than one-third of these sites (18/49) are not polymorphic in the data of Ingman et al. (2000)
. Given that both are samples from the same genealogy, we would expect a larger overlap (the probability of the observed difference is less than 3% under a standard coalescent model, but this is not really an appropriate comparison, given the star-like genealogy of mtDNA). This supports the notion that there are errors in the data, and it seems likely that most of the errors are in the data used by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
) (Macaulay, Richards, and Sykes 1999
; Kivisild and Villems 2000
).
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However, these errors cannot explain the different conclusions reached by these studies. As noted previously, random sequencing errors should erase, rather than create patterns in the data. Furthermore, Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
= -0.295, which is very close to that obtained using the data of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
= -0.248). The negative correlation is almost significant using the permutation test of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
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Thus, the data of Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
= -0.003), and in the entire data set, the correlation is positive (fig. 4
). It would appear that Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999
How unlucky were they? Figure 6
shows the distribution of
when nine sites are randomly sampled from the 49 highly polymorphic sites in the data of Ingman et al. (2000)
. The distribution has a positive mode but is skewed toward negative values. Simulations (1,000 randomly chosen samples of nine sites, each followed by 1,000 permutations to assess significance) show that the probability of obtaining a significant negative correlation (at the 5% level) is approximately 4%.
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| Discussion |
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We have shown that although the test used by Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
Finally, we think that the implications of the existence of recombination in mtDNA have been misunderstood. Recombination would clearly have important implications for the evolution of mitochondria, particularly in the context of the long argument about the evolutionary advantages of sex. Without recombination, mitochondria might be expected to decay because of the pressure of deleterious mutations (Moran 1996
). However, the main reason for the attention given to this question has been the perceived implications for our understanding of human evolution. This seems misguided. From the point of view of analyzing polymorphism data from populations, recombination matters because it allows different sites to have different genealogical histories or trees. The extent to which the tree for one site differs from the tree for another site depends on the rate of recombination between the sites (e.g., Nordborg and Tavaré 2002
). If recombination does indeed occur in mitochondria, it is surely not very common, and the trees for different parts of the mtDNA would thus be strongly correlated. Certainly, they would be much more strongly correlated to each other than to trees for nuclear sites, with which they are genetically unlinked. It follows logically that any conclusion about human evolution that is not robust to a small amount of recombination in mtDNA cannot be robust to recombination in the rest of the genome. Putting it in another way, if recombination causes different parts of the mitochondrial genome to tell different stories, then these stories are certainly independent of the stories told by the rest of the genome. Awadalla, Eyre-Walker, and Maynard Smith (1999)
argued that if recombination in mtDNA existed, then many inferences about human evolution would have to be reconsidered. A more correct statement is that any inference about human evolution that would have had to be reconsidered had recombination in mtDNA existed should in fact be reconsidered in any case.
| Acknowledgements |
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We thank Adam Eyre-Walker and Max Ingman for sending their respective data sets, Maarit Jaarola for discussions about mtDNA, Noah Rosenberg, Simon Tavaré, Carsten Wiuf, Brandon Gaut, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript.
| Footnotes |
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Brandon Gaut, Reviewing Editor
Keywords: coalescent
linkage disequilibrium
gene conversion ![]()
Address for correspondence and reprints: Magnus Nordborg, Molecular & Computational Biology, University of Southern California, 835 W 37th Street, SHS 172, Los Angeles, California 90089-1340. magnus{at}usc.edu ![]()
| References |
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