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Ancestral reconstruction of segmental duplications reveals punctuated cores of human genome evolution

Nature Genetics volume 39, pages 1361–1368 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Human segmental duplications are hotspots for nonallelic homologous recombination leading to genomic disorders, copy-number polymorphisms and gene and transcript innovations. The complex structure and history of these regions have precluded a global evolutionary analysis. Combining a modified A-Bruijn graph algorithm with comparative genome sequence data, we identify the origin of 4,692 ancestral duplication loci and use these to cluster 437 complex duplication blocks into 24 distinct groups. The sequence-divergence data between ancestral-derivative pairs and a comparison with the chimpanzee and macaque genome support a 'punctuated' model of evolution. Our analysis reveals that human segmental duplications are frequently organized around 'core' duplicons, which are enriched for transcripts and, in some cases, encode primate-specific genes undergoing positive selection. We hypothesize that the rapid expansion and fixation of some intrachromosomal segmental duplications during great-ape evolution has been due to the selective advantage conferred by these genes and transcripts embedded within these core duplications.

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Figure 1: Ancestral-state determination of duplication blocks.
Figure 2: Ancestral-state determination of 2p11 region.
Figure 3: Flowchart of computational analysis.
Figure 4: Definition of the ancestral loci by reciprocal best hit.
Figure 5: Validation of duplicons by comparative FISH analysis.
Figure 6: Nonrandom distribution of sequence divergence.
Figure 7: Genome-wide hierarchical clustering of duplication blocks and core structure.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Green, J. Felsenstein, T. Newman, C. Alkan and Z. Bao for useful comments and valuable discussions in the preparation of this manuscript, and E. Tüzün and Z. Cheng for computational assistance. This work was supported by a US National Institutes of Health grant GM58815 to E.E.E. and a Rosetta Inpharmatics fellowship (Merck Laboratories) to Z.J. T.M.-B. is a research fellow supported by Departament d'Educació i Universitats de la Generalitat de Catalunya. E.E.E. is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1705 NE Pacific Street, Seattle, 98195, Washington

    Zhaoshi Jiang, Tomas Marques-Bonet, Xinwei She & Evan E Eichler

  2. School of Informatics and Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, 47408, Indiana

    Haixu Tang

  3. Department of Genetics and Microbiology, University of Bari, Bari, 70126, Italy

    Mario Ventura & Maria Francesca Cardone

  4. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, La Jolla, 92093, California

    Pavel A Pevzner

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Contributions

Z.J. performed the analyses and drafted the manuscript. H.T. implemented the program package and performed part of the analyses. M.V. and M.F.C. performed the FISH validation experiment. T.M.-B. performed the positive selection analysis on the core genes. X.S. was involved in part of the fusion gene analysis. P.A.P. and E.E.E. designed the study, and E.E.E. finalized the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Evan E Eichler.

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Jiang, Z., Tang, H., Ventura, M. et al. Ancestral reconstruction of segmental duplications reveals punctuated cores of human genome evolution. Nat Genet 39, 1361–1368 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2007.9

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