title: The influence of recombination on SNP diversity in chickens.
abstract: The association between recombination rate and diversity, but not divergence is considered to be driven mainly by natural selection: fixation of positively selected variants and associated hitchhiking effects and/or background selection eliminating deleterious alleles. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between recombination rate, SNP diversity and interspecies divergence for 29 loci in chickens. We found that recombination rate is positively correlated with nucleotide diversity but is not correlated with interspecies divergence. It appears that variation in recombination rate explains over 30% of the variation in levels of diversity among 29 loci. Our data suggested that natural selection is a main factor in shaping SNP diversity in chickens. Since SNP diversity is significantly lower at Z-linked than at autosomal loci, we argued that genetic hitchhiking might be more important than background selection in producing the observed correlation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Technology, Jiangxi Institute of Education, Nanchang, PR China.
authors.forename: Yousheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.forename: Xiquan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens / Q000235:genetics*; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D005260:Female; D008040:Genetic Linkage; D056426:Genetic Loci; D005828:Genetics, Population; D008297:Male; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D013045:Species Specificity; D014422:Turkeys / Q000235:genetics