Comparison of Rates and Patterns of Meiotic Recombination between Humans and Chimpanzees

Jan Freudenberg, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

Published online: May 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020845

Meiotic recombination events were found to be concentrated in relatively small genomic regions that were termed recombination hotspots. Surprisingly, the genomic locations of recombination hotspots are hardly conserved between human and chimpanzee, rendering individual hotspots as evolutionarily transient features. Based on the theoretical advantages of recombination one may thus hypothesize coevolution of gene sequences and recombination modifiers. Consistently, human recombination hotspot predictions were found enriched at central nervous system (CNS) gene loci and those regions that showed accelerated sequence evolution in hominids.

Keywords: recombination hotspot; single nucleotide polymorphism; recombination modifier; natural selection; sequence evolution

Figure 1. Frequency histogram of P-values for the association of 1266 Gene Ontology categories with recombination hotspot predictions. The excess of Gene Ontology categories with P-values that are close to 0 and P-values close to 1 indicates the existence of gene functions that are enriched for hotspots and gene functions that are depleted for hotspots. Genes from the hotspot enriched categories play important roles in CNS function. Reproduced from Freudenberg et al. (2007).
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    Coop G and Przeworski M (2007) An evolutionary view of recombination. Nature Reviews. Genetics 8: 23–34.
    Rice WR (2002) Experimental tests of the adaptive significance of sexual recombination. Nature Reviews. Genetics 3: 241–251.
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Related Sub-Topics:

Replication and Recombination | Evolutionary Genomics | Molecular Evolution | Human Evolution | Evolution Rates
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Article Title: Comparison of Rates and Patterns of Meiotic Recombination between Humans and Chimpanzees
 
How to Cite close
Freudenberg, Jan(May 2008) Comparison of Rates and Patterns of Meiotic Recombination between Humans and Chimpanzees. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020845]