Estimation of hominoid ancestral population sizes under Bayesian coalescent models incorporating mutation rate variation and sequencing errors

Burgess, R., Yang, Z. (September 2008) Estimation of hominoid ancestral population sizes under Bayesian coalescent models incorporating mutation rate variation and sequencing errors. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 25 (9). pp. 1979-1994. ISSN 0737-4038

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URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18603620
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn148

Abstract

Estimation of population parameters for the common ancestors of humans and the great apes is important in understanding our evolutionary history. In particular, inference of population size for the human-chimpanzee common ancestor may shed light on the process by which the 2 species separated and on whether the human population experienced a severe size reduction in its early evolutionary history. In this study, the Bayesian method of ancestral inference of Rannala and Yang (2003. Bayes estimation of species divergence times and ancestral population sizes using DNA sequences from multiple loci. Genetics. 164:1645-1656) was extended to accommodate variable mutation rates among loci and random species-specific sequencing errors. The model was applied to analyze a genome-wide data set of similar to 15,000 neutral loci (7.4 Mb) aligned for human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and macaque. We obtained robust and precise estimates for effective population sizes along the hominoid lineage extending back similar to 30 Myr to the cercopithecoid divergence. The results showed that ancestral populations were 5-10 times larger than modern humans along the entire hominoid lineage. The estimates were robust to the priors used and to model assumptions about recombination. The unusually low X chromosome divergence between human and chimpanzee could not be explained by variation in the male mutation bias or by current models of hybridization and introgression. Instead, our parameter estimates were consistent with a simple instantaneous process for human-chimpanzee speciation but showed a major reduction in X chromosome effective population size peculiar to the human-chimpanzee common ancestor, possibly due to selective sweeps on the X prior to separation of the 2 species.

Item Type: Paper
Uncontrolled Keywords: hominoid ancestral population size Bayesian inference MCMC coalescent model sequencing errors X-CHROMOSOME INACTIVATION HUMAN GENOME DNA-SEQUENCES GENE FLOW DROSOPHILA-PSEUDOOBSCURA MOLECULAR EVOLUTION COMPLEX SPECIATION MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD REPEAT HYPOTHESIS GENERATION TIME
Subjects: bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > annotation > sequence annotation
organism description > animal > mammal > primates > hominids
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification > mutations
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Hannon lab
School of Biological Sciences > Publications
Depositing User: Tom Adams
Date: September 2008
Date Deposited: 25 Aug 2011 21:27
Last Modified: 29 Sep 2014 14:47
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/7697

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