Figures
Rapid turnover of recombination hotspots: the comparative analysis of modern and archaic human genomes supports a model of Red Queen evolution.
Recombination hotspots are subject to an evolutionary process, called biased gene conversion (BGC), which favors mutations suppressing their recombination activity. The analysis of an archaic human genome (Denisovan) showed that this self-destructive process is extremely fast, as the life expectancy of most active hotspots is less than 100,000 generations. This suggests that the turnover of recombination hotspots might be the consequence of a Red Queen process: the activity of recombination hotspots leads to their rapid loss by BGC, and the genes that determine the location of hotspots are therefore regularly under selective pressure to switch to new targets. See Lesecque et al.
Image Credit: Pauline Sémon
Citation: (2014) PLoS Genetics Issue Image | Vol. 10(11) November 2014. PLoS Genet 10(11): ev10.i11. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pgen.v10.i11
Published: November 20, 2014
Copyright: © 2014 Lesecque et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Recombination hotspots are subject to an evolutionary process, called biased gene conversion (BGC), which favors mutations suppressing their recombination activity. The analysis of an archaic human genome (Denisovan) showed that this self-destructive process is extremely fast, as the life expectancy of most active hotspots is less than 100,000 generations. This suggests that the turnover of recombination hotspots might be the consequence of a Red Queen process: the activity of recombination hotspots leads to their rapid loss by BGC, and the genes that determine the location of hotspots are therefore regularly under selective pressure to switch to new targets. See Lesecque et al.
Image Credit: Pauline Sémon