Haplotype allelic classes for detecting ongoing positive selection

Background: Natural selection eliminates detrimental and favors advantageous phenotypes. This process leaves characteristic signatures in underlying genomic segments that can be recognized through deviations in allelic or haplotypic frequency spectra. To provide an identifiable signature of recent positive selection that can be detected by comparison with the background distribution, we introduced a new way of looking at genomic polymorphisms: haplotype allelic classes. Results: The model combines segregating sites and haplotypic information in order to reveal useful data characteristics. We developed a summary statistic, Svd, to compare the distribution of the haplotypes carrying the selected allele with the distribution of the remaining ones. Coalescence simulations are used to study the distributions under standard population models assuming neutrality, demographic scenarios and selection models. To test, in practice, haplotype allelic class performance and the derived statistic in...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Julie Hussin, Philippe Nadeau, Jean-François Lefebvre, Damian Labuda
• Keywords: BMCBI 2010, Natural Selection, Positive Selection, Selection