Population Genetic Considerations Regarding Evidence for Biased Mutation Rates in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract It has recently been proposed that lower mutation rates in gene bodies compared with upstream and downstream sequences in Arabidopsis thaliana are the result of an “adaptive” modification of the rate of beneficial and deleterious mutations in these functional regions. This claim was based b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMolecular biology and evolution Vol. 40; no. 2
Main Authors Charlesworth, Brian, Jensen, Jeffrey D
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published US Oxford University Press 03.02.2023
Subjects
Analysis
Arabidopsis - genetics
Arabidopsis thaliana
Discoveries
Genes
Genetic aspects
Genetic research
Genetics, Population
Genomics
Mutation
Mutation Rate
Mutation rates
Population genetics
Selection, Genetic
population genetics
purifying selection
mutation rates
Tajima's D
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Summary:Abstract It has recently been proposed that lower mutation rates in gene bodies compared with upstream and downstream sequences in Arabidopsis thaliana are the result of an “adaptive” modification of the rate of beneficial and deleterious mutations in these functional regions. This claim was based both on analyses of mutation accumulation lines and on population genomics data. Here, we show that several questionable assumptions were used in the population genomics analyses. In particular, we demonstrate that the difference between gene bodies and less selectively constrained sequences in the magnitude of Tajima's D can in principle be explained by the presence of sites subject to purifying selection and does not require lower mutation rates in regions experiencing selective constraints.
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ISSN:0737-4038
1537-1719
1537-1719
DOI:10.1093/molbev/msac275