Selection at linked sites shapes heritable phenotypic variation in C. elegans

Selection at linked sites shapes heritable phenotypic variation in C. elegans.

  

Science (New York, N.Y.), Vol. 330, No. 6002. (15 October 2010), pp. 372-376, doi:10.1126/science.1194208

by Matthew V. Rockman, Sonja S. Skrovanek, Leonid Kruglyak

This paper is recommended by Eric Haag (University of Maryland), who writes:

This paper is a real gem of interdisciplinary genetics thinking. Its key insight is that how natural selection impacts gene expression is highly subject to the overall frequency and chromosomal distribution of recombination (to the point of outweighing the biological processes affected).   Rockman shows that in mostly selfing nematodes like C. elegans, the central 50% of each autosome more or less acts like a "supergene" that harbors very little variation affecting gene expression genome-wide.  In contrast, the terminal 1/4 on either side is where nearly all the variation affecting gene expression resides. The available evidence suggests this occurs because selective sweeps wipe out the variation over much of the central domain of each automosome.