Genome-wide analysis of long-term evolutionary domestication in Drosophila melanogaster

Sci Rep. 2016 Dec 22:6:39281. doi: 10.1038/srep39281.

Abstract

Experimental evolutionary genomics now allows biologists to test fundamental theories concerning the genetic basis of adaptation. We have conducted one of the longest laboratory evolution experiments with any sexually-reproducing metazoan, Drosophila melanogaster. We used next-generation resequencing data from this experiment to examine genome-wide patterns of genetic variation over an evolutionary time-scale that approaches 1,000 generations. We also compared measures of variation within and differentiation between our populations to simulations based on a variety of evolutionary scenarios. Our analysis yielded no clear evidence of hard selective sweeps, whereby natural selection acts to increase the frequency of a newly-arising mutation in a population until it becomes fixed. We do find evidence for selection acting on standing genetic variation, as independent replicate populations exhibit similar population-genetic dynamics, without obvious fixation of candidate alleles under selection. A hidden-Markov model test for selection also found widespread evidence for selection. We found more genetic variation genome-wide, and less differentiation between replicate populations genome-wide, than arose in any of our simulated evolutionary scenarios.

MeSH terms

  • Adaptation, Physiological / genetics
  • Alleles
  • Animals
  • Biological Evolution*
  • Cell Differentiation
  • Computer Simulation
  • Domestication
  • Drosophila melanogaster / genetics*
  • Drosophila melanogaster / physiology*
  • Female
  • Gene Frequency
  • Genetic Variation
  • Genetics, Population
  • Genome, Insect
  • Genomics
  • Heterozygote
  • Markov Chains
  • Selection, Genetic