Long-Term Balancing Selection in LAD1 Maintains a Missense Trans-Species Polymorphism in Humans, Chimpanzees, and Bonobos

Understanding rare and common diseases in the context of human evolution

The wealth of available genetic information is allowing the reconstruction of human demographic and adaptive history. Demography and purifying selection affect the purge of rare, deleterious mutations from the human population, whereas positive and balancing selection can increase the frequency of advantageous variants, improving survival and reproduction in specific environmental conditions. In this review, I discuss how theoretical and empirical population genetics studies, using both modern and ancient DNA data, are a powerful tool for obtaining new insight into the genetic basis of severe disorders and complex disease phenotypes, rare and common, focusing particularly on infectious disease risk.

Excess of Deleterious Mutations around HLA Genes Reveals Evolutionary Cost of Balancing Selection

Deleterious mutations are expected to evolve under negative selection and are usually purged from the population. However, deleterious alleles segregate in the human population and some disease-associated variants are maintained at considerable frequencies. Here, we test the hypothesis that balancing selection may counteract purifying selection in neighboring regions and thus maintain deleterious variants at higher frequency than expected from their detrimental fitness effect. We first show in realistic simulations that balancing selection reduces the density of polymorphic sites surrounding a locus under balancing selection, but at the same time markedly increases the population frequency of the remaining variants, including even substantially deleterious alleles. To test the predictions of our simulations empirically, we then use whole-exome sequencing data from 6,500 human individuals and focus on the most established example for balancing selection in the human genome, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Our analysis shows an elevated frequency of putatively deleterious coding variants in nonhuman leukocyte antigen (non-HLA) genes localized in the MHC region. The mean frequency of these variants declined with physical distance from the classical HLA genes, indicating dependency on genetic linkage. These results reveal an indirect cost of the genetic diversity maintained by balancing selection, which has hitherto been perceived as mostly advantageous, and have implications both for the evolution of recombination and also for the epidemiology of various MHC-associated diseases.

How reticulated are species?

Many groups of closely related species have reticulate phylogenies. Recent genomic analyses are showing this in many insects and vertebrates, as well as in microbes and plants. In microbes, lateral gene transfer is the dominant process that spoils strictly tree-like phylogenies, but in multicellular eukaryotes hybridization and introgression among related species is probably more important. Because many species, including the ancestors of ancient major lineages, seem to evolve rapidly in adaptive radiations, some sexual compatibility may exist among them. Introgression and reticulation can thereby affect all parts of the tree of life, not just the recent species at the tips. Our understanding of adaptive evolution, speciation, phylogenetics, and comparative biology must adapt to these mostly recent findings. Introgression has important practical implications as well, not least for the management of genetically modified organisms in pest and disease control.

Recent Selection Changes in Human Genes under Long-Term Balancing Selection

Balancing selection is an important evolutionary force that maintains genetic and phenotypic diversity in populations. Most studies in humans have focused on long-standing balancing selection, which persists over long periods of time and is generally shared across populations. But balanced polymorphisms can also promote fast adaptation, especially when the environment changes. To better understand the role of previously balanced alleles in novel adaptations, we analyzed in detail four loci as case examples of this mechanism. These loci show hallmark signatures of long-term balancing selection in African populations, but not in Eurasian populations. The disparity between populations is due to changes in allele frequencies, with intermediate frequency alleles in Africans (likely due to balancing selection) segregating instead at low- or high-derived allele frequency in Eurasia. We explicitly tested the support for different evolutionary models with an approximate Bayesian computation approach and show that the patterns in PKDREJ, SDR39U1, and ZNF473 are best explained by recent changes in selective pressure in certain populations. Specifically, we infer that alleles previously under long-term balancing selection, or alleles linked to them, were recently targeted by positive selection in Eurasian populations. Balancing selection thus likely served as a source of functional alleles that mediated subsequent adaptations to novel environments.

Trans-species polymorphism in humans and the great apes is generally maintained by balancing selection that modulates the host immune response

Known examples of ancient identical-by-descent genetic variants being shared between evolutionarily related species, known as trans-species polymorphisms (TSPs), result from counterbalancing selective forces acting on target genes to confer resistance against infectious agents. To date, putative TSPs between humans and other primate species have been identified for the highly polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC), the histo-blood ABO group, two antiviral genes (ZC3HAV1 and TRIM5), an autoimmunity-related gene LAD1 and several non-coding genomic segments with a putative regulatory role. Although the number of well-characterized TSPs under long-term balancing selection is still very small, these examples are connected by a common thread, namely that they involve genes with key roles in the immune system and, in heterozygosity, appear to confer genetic resistance to pathogens. Here, we review known cases of shared polymorphism that appear to be under long-term balancing selection in humans and the great apes. Although the specific selective agent(s) responsible are still unknown, these TSPs may nevertheless be seen as constituting important adaptive events that have occurred during the evolution of the primate immune system.

Trans-species polymorphism at antimicrobial innate immunity cathelicidin genes of Atlantic cod and related species

Natural selection, the most important force in evolution, comes in three forms. Negative purifying selection removes deleterious variation and maintains adaptations. Positive directional selection fixes beneficial variants, producing new adaptations. Balancing selection maintains variation in a population. Important mechanisms of balancing selection include heterozygote advantage, frequency-dependent advantage of rarity, and local and fluctuating episodic selection. A rare pathogen gains an advantage because host defenses are predominantly effective against prevalent types. Similarly, a rare immune variant gives its host an advantage because the prevalent pathogens cannot escape the host's apostatic defense. Due to the stochastic nature of evolution, neutral variation may accumulate on genealogical branches, but trans-species polymorphisms are rare under neutrality and are strong evidence for balancing selection. Balanced polymorphism maintains diversity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in vertebrates. The Atlantic cod is missing genes for both MHC-II and CD4, vital parts of the adaptive immune system. Nevertheless, cod are healthy in their ecological niche, maintaining large populations that support major commercial fisheries. Innate immunity is of interest from an evolutionary perspective, particularly in taxa lacking adaptive immunity. Here, we analyze extensive amino acid and nucleotide polymorphisms of the cathelicidin gene family in Atlantic cod and closely related taxa. There are three major clusters, Cath1, Cath2, and Cath3, that we consider to be paralogous genes. There is extensive nucleotide and amino acid allelic variation between and within clusters. The major feature of the results is that the variation clusters by alleles and not by species in phylogenetic trees and discriminant analysis of principal components. Variation within the three groups shows trans-species polymorphism that is older than speciation and that is suggestive of balancing selection maintaining the variation. Using Bayesian and likelihood methods positive and negative selection is evident at sites in the conserved part of the genes and, to a larger extent, in the active part which also shows episodic diversifying selection, further supporting the argument for balancing selection.

Time-dependent selection pressure on two arthropod-borne RNA viruses in the same serogroup

Understanding the genetic basis of viral adaptation to taxonomically diverse groups of host species inhabiting different eco-climatic zones is crucial for the discovery of factors underpinning the successful establishment of these infectious pathogens in new hosts/environments. To gain insights into the dynamics of nonsynonymous (dN) and synonymous substitutions (dS) and the ratio between the two (ω=dN/dS), we analyzed the complete nucleotide coding sequence data of the M segment, which encodes glycoproteins of two negative-sense RNA viruses, Akabane virus (AKV) and Schmallenberg virus (SBV) that belong to the same serogroup. While AKV is relatively older and has been circulating in ruminant populations since 1970s, SBV was first reported in 2011. The ω was estimated to be 1.67 and 0.09 for SBV and AKV, respectively, and the estimated mutation rate of SBV is at least 25 times higher than that of AKV. Given the different evolutionary stages of the two viruses, most of the slightly deleterious mutations were likely purged out or kept in low frequency in the AKV genome, whereas positive selection together with the accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations might contribute to such an inflated mutation rate of SBV. The evolutionary distance (d) is nonlinearly and negatively correlated with ω, but is positively correlated with dN and dS. Collectively, the different patterns in ω, dN, dS, and d between AKV and SBV identified in this study provide empirical evidence for a time-dependent selection pressure.