svviz: a read viewer for validating structural variants
Noah Spies , Justin M Zook , Marc Salit , Arend Sidow
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/016063

Visualizing read alignments is the most effective way to validate candidate SVs with existing data. We present svviz, a sequencing read visualizer for structural variants (SVs) that sorts and displays only reads relevant to a candidate SV. svviz works by searching input bam(s) for potentially relevant reads, realigning them against the inferred sequence of the putative variant allele as well as the reference allele, and identifying reads that match one allele better than the other. Reads are assigned to the proper allele based on alignment score, read pair orientation and insert size. Separate views of the two alleles are then displayed in a scrollable web browser view, enabling a more intuitive visualization of each allele, compared to the single reference genome-based view common to most current read browsers. The web view facilitates examining the evidence for or against a putative variant, estimating zygosity, visualizing affected genomic annotations, and manual refinement of breakpoints. An optional command-line-only interface allows summary statistics and graphics to be exported directly to standard graphics file formats. svviz is open source and freely available from github, and requires as input only structural variant coordinates (called using any other software package), reads in bam format, and a reference genome. Reads from any high-throughput sequencing platform are supported, including Illumina short-read, mate-pair, synthetic long-read (assembled), Pacific Biosciences, and Oxford Nanopore. svviz is open source and freely available from https://github.com/svviz/svviz. 

The origins of a novel butterfly wing patterning gene from within a family of conserved cell cycle regulators
Nicola Nadeau , Carolina Pardo-Diaz , Annabel Whibley , Megan Ann Supple , Richard Wallbank , Grace C. Wu , Luana Maroja , Laura Ferguson , Heather Hines , Camilo Salazar , Richard ffrench-Constant , Mathieu Joron , William Owen McMillan , Chris Jiggins
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/016006

A major challenge in evolutionary biology is to understand the origins of novel structures. The wing patterns of butterflies and moths are derived phenotypes unique to the Lepidoptera. Here we identify a gene that we name poikilomousa (poik), which regulates colour pattern switches in the mimetic Heliconius butterflies. Strong associations between phenotypic variation and DNA sequence variation are seen in three different Heliconius species, in addition to associations between gene expression and colour pattern. Colour pattern variants are also associated with differences in splicing of poik transcripts. poik is a member of the conserved fizzy family of cell cycle regulators. It belongs to a faster evolving subfamily, the closest functionally characterised orthologue being the cortex gene in Drosophila, a female germ-line specific protein involved in meiosis. poik appears to have adopted a novel function in the Lepidoptera and become a major target for natural selection acting on colour and pattern variation in this group.

Mutation rate estimation for 15 autosomal STR loci in a large population from Mainland China
Zhuo Zhao , Hua Wang , Jie Zhang , Zhi-Peng Liu , Ming Liu , Yuan Zhang , Li Sun , Hui Zhang
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/015875

STR, short trandem repeats, is well known as a type of powerful genetic marker and widely used in studying human population genetics. Compared with the conventional genetic markers, the mutation rate of STR is higher. Additionally, the mutations of STR loci do not lead to genetic inconsistencies between the genotypes of parents and children; therefore, the analysis of STR mutation is more suited to assess the population mutation. In this study, we focused on 15 autosomal STR loci (D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818, FGA). DNA samples from a total of 42416 unrelated healthy individuals (19037 trios) from the population of Mainland China collected between Jan 2012 and May 2014 were successfully investigated. In our study, the allele frequencies, paternal mutation rates, maternal mutation rates and average mutation rates were detected in the 15 STR loci. Furthermore, we also investigated the relationship between paternal ages, maternal ages, pregnant time, area and average mutation rate. We found that paternal mutation rate is higher than maternal mutation rate and the paternal, maternal, and average mutation rates have a positive correlation with paternal ages, maternal ages and times respectively. Additionally, the average mutation rates of coastal areas are higher than that of inland areas. Overall, these results suggest that the 15 autosomal STR loci can provide highly informative polymorphic data for population genetic assessment in Mainland China, as well as confirm and extend the application of STR analysis in population genetics.

Recent evolution in Rattus norvegicus is shaped by declining effective population size
Eva E Deinum , Daniel L Halligan , Rob W Ness , Yao-Hua Zhang , Lin Cong , Jian-Xu Zhang , Peter D Keightley
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/015818

The brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, is both a notorious pest and a frequently used model in biomedical research. By analysing genome sequences of 12 wild-caught brown rats from their ancestral range in NE China, along with the sequence of a black rat, R. rattus, we investigate the selective and demographic forces shaping variation in the genome. We estimate that the recent effective population size (N_e) of this species = 1.24 x 10^5, based on silent site diversity. We compare patterns of diversity in these genomes with patterns in multiple genome sequences of the house mouse Mus musculus castaneus), which has a much larger N_e. This reveals an important role for variation in the strength of genetic drift in mammalian genome evolution. By a Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (PSMC) analysis of demographic history, we infer that there has been a recent population size bottleneck in wild rats, which we date to approximately 20,000 years ago. Consistent with this, wild rat populations have experienced an increased flux of mildly deleterious mutations, which segregate at higher frequencies in protein-coding genes and conserved noncoding elements (CNEs). This leads to negative estimates of the rate of adaptive evolution (alpha) in proteins and CNEs, a result which we discuss in relation to the strongly positive estimates observed in wild house mice. As a consequence of the population bottleneck, wild rats also show a markedly slower decay of linkage disequilibrium with physical distance than wild house mice.

Speciation in Heliconius Butterflies: Minimal Contact Followed by Millions of Generations of Hybridisation
Simon Henry Martin , Anders Eriksson , Krzysztof M. Kozak , Andrea Manica , Chris D. Jiggins
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/015800

Documenting the full extent of gene flow during speciation poses a challenge, as species ranges change over time and current rates of hybridisation might not reflect historical trends. Theoretical work has emphasized the potential for speciation in the face of ongoing hybridisation, and the genetic mechanisms that might facilitate this process. However, elucidating how the rate of gene flow between species may have changed over time has proved difficult. Here we use Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to fit a model of speciation between the Neotropical butterflies Heliconius melpomene and Heliconius cydno. These species are ecologically divergent, rarely hybridize and display female hybrid sterility. Nevertheless, previous genomic studies suggests pervasive gene flow between them, extending deep into their past, and potentially throughout the speciation process. By modelling the rates of gene flow during early and later stages of speciation, we find that these species have been hybridising for hundreds of thousands of years, but have not done so continuously since their initial divergence. Instead, it appears that gene flow was rare or absent for as long as a million years in the early stages of speciation. Therefore, by dissecting the timing of gene flow between these species, we are able to reject a scenario of purely sympatric speciation in the face of continuous gene flow. We suggest that the period of minimal contact early in speciation may have allowed for the accumulation of genomic changes that later enabled these species to remain distinct despite a dramatic increase in the rate of hybridisation.

Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations
Marc Haber , Massimo Mezzavilla , Yali Xue , David Comas , Paolo Gasparini , Pierre Zalloua , Chris Tyler-Smith
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/015396

The Armenians are a culturally isolated population who historically inhabited a region in the Near East bounded by the Mediterranean and Black seas and the Caucasus, but remain underrepresented in genetic studies and have a complex history including a major geographic displacement during World War One. Here, we analyse genome-wide variation in 173 Armenians and compare them to 78 other worldwide populations. We find that Armenians form a distinctive cluster linking the Near East, Europe, and the Caucasus. We show that Armenian diversity can be explained by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3,000 and ~2,000 BCE, a period characterized by major population migrations after the domestication of the horse, appearance of chariots, and the rise of advanced civilizations in the Near East. However, genetic signals of population mixture cease after ~1,200 BCE when Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean world suddenly and violently collapsed. Armenians have since remained isolated and genetic structure within the population developed ~500 years ago when Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Safavid Empire in Iran. Finally, we show that Armenians have higher genetic affinity to Neolithic Europeans than other present-day Near Easterners, and that 29% of the Armenian ancestry may originate from an ancestral population best represented by Neolithic Europeans.