Reduced meiotic recombination in rhesus macaques and the origin of the human recombination landscape

Taking identity-by-descent analysis into the wild: Estimating realized relatedness in free-ranging macaques

Biological relatedness is a key consideration in studies of behavior, population structure, and trait evolution. Except for parent-offspring dyads, pedigrees capture relatedness imperfectly. The number and length of DNA segments that are identical-by-descent (IBD) yield the most precise estimates of relatedness. Here, we leverage novel methods for estimating locus-specific IBD from low coverage whole genome resequencing data to demonstrate the feasibility and value of resolving fine-scaled gradients of relatedness in free-living animals. Using primarily 4-6× coverage data from a rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) population with available long-term pedigree data, we show that we can call the number and length of IBD segments across the genome with high accuracy even at 0.5× coverage. The resulting estimates demonstrate substantial variation in genetic relatedness within kin classes, leading to overlapping distributions between kin classes. They identify cryptic genetic relatives that are not represented in the pedigree and reveal elevated recombination rates in females relative to males, which allows us to discriminate maternal and paternal kin using genotype data alone. Our findings represent a breakthrough in the ability to understand the predictors and consequences of genetic relatedness in natural populations, contributing to our understanding of a fundamental component of population structure in the wild.

Novel Insights into the Landscape of Crossover and Noncrossover Events in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Meiotic recombination landscapes differ greatly between distantly and closely related taxa, populations, individuals, sexes, and even within genomes; however, the factors driving this variation are yet to be well elucidated. Here, we directly estimate contemporary crossover rates and, for the first time, noncrossover rates in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) from four three-generation pedigrees comprising 32 individuals. We further compare these results with historical, demography-aware, linkage disequilibrium-based recombination rate estimates. From paternal meioses in the pedigrees, 165 crossover events with a median resolution of 22.3 kb were observed, corresponding to a male autosomal map length of 2,357 cM-approximately 15% longer than an existing linkage map based on human microsatellite loci. In addition, 85 noncrossover events with a mean tract length of 155 bp were identified-similar to the tract lengths observed in the only other two primates in which noncrossovers have been studied to date, humans and baboons. Consistent with observations in other placental mammals with PRDM9-directed recombination, crossover (and to a lesser extent noncrossover) events in rhesus macaques clustered in intergenic regions and toward the chromosomal ends in males-a pattern in broad agreement with the historical, sex-averaged recombination rate estimates-and evidence of GC-biased gene conversion was observed at noncrossover sites.

Recombination map tailored to Native Hawaiians may improve robustness of genomic scans for positive selection

Recombination events establish the patterns of haplotypic structure in a population and estimates of recombination rates are used in several downstream population and statistical genetic analyses. Using suboptimal maps from distantly related populations may reduce the efficacy of genomic analyses, particularly for underrepresented populations such as the Native Hawaiians. To overcome this challenge, we constructed recombination maps using genome-wide array data from two study samples of Native Hawaiians: one reflecting the current admixed state of Native Hawaiians (NH map) and one based on individuals of enriched Polynesian ancestries (PNS map) with the potential to be used for less admixed Polynesian populations such as the Samoans. We found the recombination landscape to be less correlated with those from other continental populations (e.g. Spearman's rho = 0.79 between PNS and CEU (Utah residents with Northern and Western European ancestry) compared to 0.92 between YRI (Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria) and CEU at 50 kb resolution), likely driven by the unique demographic history of the Native Hawaiians. PNS also shared the fewest recombination hotspots with other populations (e.g. 8% of hotspots shared between PNS and CEU compared to 27% of hotspots shared between YRI and CEU). We found that downstream analyses in the Native Hawaiian population, such as local ancestry inference, imputation, and IBD segment and relatedness detections, would achieve similar efficacy when using the NH map compared to an omnibus map. However, for genome scans of adaptive loci using integrated haplotype scores, we found several loci with apparent genome-wide significant signals (|Z-score|> 4) in Native Hawaiians that would not have been significant when analyzed using NH-specific maps. Population-specific recombination maps may therefore improve the robustness of haplotype-based statistics and help us better characterize the evolutionary history that may underlie Native Hawaiian-specific health conditions that persist today.

Recombination map tailored to Native Hawaiians improves robustness of genomic scans for positive selection

Recombination events establish the patterns of haplotypic structure in a population and estimates of recombination rates are used in several downstream population and statistical genetic analyses. Using suboptimal maps from distantly related populations may reduce the efficacy of genomic analyses, particularly for underrepresented populations such as the Native Hawaiians. To overcome this challenge, we constructed recombination maps using genome-wide array data from two study samples of Native Hawaiians: one reflecting the current admixed state of Native Hawaiians (NH map), and one based on individuals of enriched Polynesian ancestries (PNS map) with the potential to be used for less admixed Polynesian populations such as the Samoans. We found the recombination landscape to be less correlated with those from other continental populations (e.g. Spearman's rho = 0.79 between PNS and CEU (Utah residents with Northern and Western European ancestry) compared to 0.92 between YRI (Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria) and CEU at 50 kb resolution), likely driven by the unique demographic history of the Native Hawaiians. PNS also shared the fewest recombination hotspots with other populations (e.g. 8% of hotspots shared between PNS and CEU compared to 27% of hotspots shared between YRI and CEU). We found that downstream analyses in the Native Hawaiian population, such as local ancestry inference, imputation, and IBD segment and relatedness detections, would achieve similar efficacy when using the NH map compared to an omnibus map. However, for genome scans of adaptive loci using integrated haplotype scores, we found several loci with apparent genome-wide significant signals (|Z-score| > 4) in Native Hawaiians that would not have been significant when analyzed using NH-specific maps. Population-specific recombination maps may therefore improve the robustness of haplotype-based statistics and help us better characterize the evolutionary history that may underlie Native Hawaiian-specific health conditions that persist today.

Comparative genomics reveals the hybrid origin of a macaque group

Although species can arise through hybridization, compelling evidence for hybrid speciation has been reported only rarely in animals. Here, we present phylogenomic analyses on genomes from 12 macaque species and show that the fascicularis group originated from an ancient hybridization between the sinica and silenus groups ~3.45 to 3.56 million years ago. The X chromosomes and low-recombination regions exhibited equal contributions from each parental lineage, suggesting that they were less affected by subsequent backcrossing and hence could have played an important role in maintaining hybrid integrity. We identified many reproduction-associated genes that could have contributed to the development of the mixed sexual phenotypes characteristic of the fascicularis group. The phylogeny within the silenus group was also resolved, and functional experimentation confirmed that all extant Western silenus species are susceptible to HIV-1 infection. Our study provides novel insights into macaque evolution and reveals a hybrid speciation event that has occurred only very rarely in primates.

High-Resolution Estimates of Crossover and Noncrossover Recombination from a Captive Baboon Colony

Homologous recombination has been extensively studied in humans and a handful of model organisms. Much less is known about recombination in other species, including nonhuman primates. Here, we present a study of crossovers (COs) and noncrossover (NCO) recombination in olive baboons (Papio anubis) from two pedigrees containing a total of 20 paternal and 17 maternal meioses, and compare these results to linkage disequilibrium (LD) based recombination estimates from 36 unrelated olive baboons. We demonstrate how COs, combined with LD-based recombination estimates, can be used to identify genome assembly errors. We also quantify sex-specific differences in recombination rates, including elevated male CO and reduced female CO rates near telomeres. Finally, we add to the increasing body of evidence suggesting that while most NCO recombination tracts in mammals are short (e.g., <500 bp), there is a non-negligible fraction of longer (e.g., >1 kb) NCO tracts. For NCO tracts shorter than 10 kb, we fit a mixture of two (truncated) geometric distributions model to the NCO tract length distribution and estimate that >99% of all NCO tracts are very short (mean 24 bp), but the remaining tracts can be quite long (mean 4.3 kb). A single geometric distribution model for NCO tract lengths is incompatible with the data, suggesting that LD-based methods for estimating NCO recombination rates that make this assumption may need to be modified.

Genomic resources for rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are among the most extensively studied of nonhuman primates. This species has been the subject of many investigations concerning basic primate biology and behavior, including studies of social organization, developmental psychology, physiology, endocrinology, and neurodevelopment. Rhesus macaques are also critically important as a nonhuman primate model of human health and disease, including use in studies of infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, aging, and drug or alcohol abuse. Current research addressing fundamental biological and/or applied biomedical questions benefits from various genetic and genomic analyses. As a result, the genome of rhesus macaques has been the subject of more study than most nonhuman primates. This paper briefly discusses a number of information resources that can provide interested researchers with access to genetic and genomic data describing the content of the rhesus macaque genome, available information regarding genetic variation within the species, results from studies of gene expression, and other aspects of genomic analysis. Specific online databases are discussed, including the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, the University of California Santa Cruz genome browser, Ensembl genome browser, the Macaque Genotype and Phenotype database (mGAP), Rhesusbase, and others.