MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 9, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2005 22(5):1223-1230; doi:10.1093/molbev/msi106
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Research Article |
Molecular Evolution of Recombination Hotspots and Highly Recombining Pseudoautosomal Regions in Hominoids
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago
E-mail: soojin.yi{at}biology.gatech.edu.
We examined the effects of recombination on the molecular evolution of noncoding regions in pseudoautosomal regions (PARs) and recombination hotspots in hominoids. The PAR-linked regions analyzed had on average longer branch lengths than those of the recombination hotspots. Moreover, contrary to previous observations, we found no correlation between recombination rate and silent site divergence in our data set and little change in the GC content during recent hominoid evolution. This suggests that the current rate of recombination is not a good indicator of the past rates of recombination for these highly recombining regions. Furthermore, human recombination hotspots show increased AT to GC substitutions in the human lineage, while no such pattern is detected for PAR-linked regions. Together, these observations suggest that recombination hotspots in hominoids are transient in the evolutionary timescale. Interestingly, the 16p13.3 recombination hotspot locus violates a local molecular clock, though the locus appears to be noncoding and should evolve neutrally. We hypothesize that sudden changes in recombination rate have caused the changes in substitution rate at this locus.
Key Words: recombination hotspot pseudoautosomal region biased gene conversion
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