In order to infer population structure at the individual level, we estimated individual inbreeding coe cients and examined the relationship between geographical distance and genetic relatedness from polymorphic microsatellite data for a population of Mimulus guttatus that has an intermediate sel®ng rate. Expected heterozygosities for ®ve microsatellites ranged from 0.79 to 0.93. The population inbreeding coe cient was calculated to be 0.19 (SE 0.023). A method-of-moments estimator developed by Ritland (1996b) was used to estimate the distribution of inbreeding among and relatedness between individuals of a natural population. The mean individual inbreeding coe cient (F 0.16) did not di er signi®cantly from the population-level estimate. Most of the individuals appeared to be outbred, and there were very few plants that had estimated inbreeding coe cients greater than one-half. Individuals sampled from one transect showed signi®cantly more inbreeding than individuals sampled along the other (P 0.005). There was no apparent relationship between interplant distance (range: 0±14 m) and mean genetic relatedness between individuals. These results represent the ®rst application of polymorphic microsatellites to estimate ®ne-scale genetic population structure.Keywords: inbreeding, isolation by distance, microsatellites, Mimulus, population structure, selffertilization. IntroductionThe genetic structure of a population can have profound e ects on its evolutionary potential. Through the use of polymorphic genetic markers such as allozymes, there is now a large number of studies that describe population structure in terms such as the average level of inbreeding within a population or the average genetic di erentiation between populations or subpopulations (Hamrick & Godt, 1990). In contrast, very few studies use markers to infer population structure at the level of individual organisms. This is unfortunate, because knowledge of the extent to which individuals di er in their inbreeding histories and the degree of genetic relatedness between pairs of individuals is important for many areas of ecology and evolution.For example, if individuals vary in their inbreeding histories, then we expect statistical associations to exist between diploid genotypes at di erent loci (Haldane, 1949; Kimura, 1958). Knowing the variance in individual inbreeding coe cients, and therefore the relative magnitude of these associations (referred to as identity disequilibrium), is important for the interpretation of studies of natural selection at individual loci (Ohta & Cockerham, 1974; Charlesworth, 1990; Houle, 1994) and on quantitative traits . In addition, the existence of individual variation in inbreeding coe cient implies that traditional quantitative genetic methods for predicting the evolutionary response to selection in outbred (Lande & Arnold, 1983) or fully inbred populations (Mather & Jinks, 1982) are not appropriate. Instead, one can use the distribution of inbreeding histories in a partially inbred population, in conjunction...
BackgroundGenome-wide analysis of sequence divergence among species offers profound insights into the evolutionary processes that shape lineages. When full-genome sequencing is not feasible for a broad comparative study, we propose the use of array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) in order to identify orthologous genes with high sequence divergence. Here we discuss experimental design, statistical power, success rate, sources of variation and potential confounding factors. We used a spotted PCR product microarray platform from Drosophila melanogaster to assess sequence divergence on a gene-by-gene basis in three fully sequenced heterologous species (D. sechellia, D. simulans, and D. yakuba). Because complete genome assemblies are available for these species this study presents a powerful test for the use of aCGH as a tool to measure sequence divergence.ResultsWe found a consistent and linear relationship between hybridization ratio and sequence divergence of the sample to the platform species. At higher levels of sequence divergence (< 92% sequence identity to D. melanogaster) ~84% of features had significantly less hybridization to the array in the heterologous species than the platform species, and thus could be identified as "diverged". At lower levels of divergence (≥ 97% identity), only 13% of genes were identified as diverged. While ~40% of the variation in hybridization ratio can be accounted for by variation in sequence identity of the heterologous sample relative to D. melanogaster, other individual characteristics of the DNA sequences, such as GC content, also contribute to variation in hybridization ratio, as does technical variation.ConclusionsHere we demonstrate that aCGH can accurately be used as a proxy to estimate genome-wide divergence, thus providing an efficient way to evaluate how evolutionary processes and genomic architecture can shape species diversity in non-model systems. Given the increased number of species for which microarray platforms are available, comparative studies can be conducted for many interesting lineages in order to identify highly diverged genes that may be the target of natural selection.
We report quantitative measurements of ten parameters of nutritive sucking behavior in 91 normal full-term infants obtained using a novel device (an Orometer) and a data collection/analytical system (Suck Editor). The sucking parameters assessed include the number of sucks, mean pressure amplitude of sucks, mean frequency of sucks per second, mean suck interval in seconds, sucking amplitude variability, suck interval variability, number of suck bursts, mean number of sucks per suck burst, mean suck burst duration, and mean interburst gap duration. For analyses, test sessions were divided into 4 × 2-min segments. In single-study tests, 36 of 60 possible comparisons of ten parameters over six pairs of 2-min time intervals showed a p value of 0.05 or less. In 15 paired tests in the same infants at different ages, 33 of 50 possible comparisons of ten parameters over five time intervals showed p values of 0.05 or less. Quantification of nutritive sucking is feasible, showing statistically valid results for ten parameters that change during a feed and with age. These findings suggest that further research, based on our approach, may show clinical value in feeding assessment, diagnosis, and clinical management.
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