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Modeling recombination rate as a quantitative trait reveals new insight into selection in humans

Meiotic recombination is both a fundamental biological process required for proper chromosomal segregation during meiosis and a fundamental genomic parameter that shapes major features of the genomic landscape. While there is strong evidence of fitness costs of low rates of recombination, the possible fitness costs of high rates of recombination are less defined. To determine whether a single lower fitness bound can explain the variation in recombination rate observed in human populations, we simulated the evolution of recombination rate as a quantitative trait using empirically-derived parameters. For our fitness function, we implemented a hyperbolic tangent curve with flexible parameters to capture a wide range of existing hypotheses. We found that both a lower and upper bound are necessary to explain the observed variation in recombination rate, and we describe a parameter space for an upper bound on recombination rate that produces results consistent with empirical observations.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-6178
Date06 August 2021
CreatorsDrury, Austin L.
PublisherScholars Junction
Source SetsMississippi State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations

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