Christian Schlotterer

..Recent studies have shown that multilocus scans that compare different populations for several loci can identify genomic regions carrying a mutation that results in a local adaptation...

..The remating parameter alpha was similar in both populations (a = 1.3-1.4). No more than two distinct paternal genotypes per family were detected in each population...

..Our results imply that the population structure and demographic past of African D. melanogaster populations need to be considered for the inference of footprints of selection in non-African populations...

..simulans. We conclude that our data are not compatible with a neutral scenario. Thus, the reduced variability at X-linked loci is most likely caused by selective sweeps associated with the out-of-Africa habitat expansion of D. simulans...

..Pairwise F(ST) analysis, however, indicated significant population differentiation between all eight populations surveyed. A significant signal for population reduction in cosmopolitan populations was found only for X-linked loci...

..The origin of functional innovation is among the key questions in biology. Recently, it has been shown that new genes could arise from non-coding DNA and that such novel genes are often involved in male reproduction...

..We scrutinized the evolutionary dynamics of retroposition by focusing on retrogenes for which the parental copy has degenerated...

..Furthermore, this 'hitchhiking mapping' could also help in the functional characterization of genomes...

..We propose that the availability of D. melanogaster populations with high and low population structure provides a novel tool for the identification of ecologically important adaptations by hitchhiking mapping...

..simulans. Our observation of similar levels of variability of both species will have important implications for the interpretation of patterns of molecular evolution...

..Based on our results we propose that the low genetic differentiation among these species results from shared ancestry rather than high rates of gene flow...

..As the latter are notoriously difficult to obtain for experimental data, we suggest that other statistics, such as lnRV, may be better suited to the identification of microsatellite loci subject to selection...

..Our analyses suggest that the 454 technology has a large potential for expression profiling, and the high mapping accuracy indicates that it should be possible to compare expression profiles across species...

..Furthermore, the thermosensitivity of this network may be related to the high evolvability of several secondary sexual characters in the genus Drosophila...

..melanogaster, D. simulans and D. sechellia, despite that the D. melanogaster and D. simulans population samples were of non-African origin and represented recently expanded populations...

..Since this adaptive evolution is continuing after the split of D. mauritiana and Drosophila simulans, we conclude that genomic conflict is not restricted to short episodes, but rather an ongoing process in Drosophila...

..Finally, using our high-resolution TE abundance measurements, we identified 13 candidate positively selected TE insertions based on their high population frequencies and on low Tajima's D values in their neighborhoods...

..This mechanism reduces the sequence requirement imposed on novel introns and implies that the capacity of the spliceosome to recognize weak splice sites was a prerequisite for intron gain during eukaryotic evolution...

..The highly self-compatible Antirrhinum majus ssp. cirrhigerum population has high levels of variability and no significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, suggesting substantial rates of outcrossing...

..The higher number of European alleles on the third chromosome could be due to stronger selection against foreign alleles on the X chromosome or to more introgression of (beneficial) alleles on the third chromosome...

..Our study suggests that hitchhiking mapping is a universal approach for the identification of ecologically important mutations...

..melanogaster. When compared to other species, D. melanogaster has significantly shorter microsatellites. Our results suggest that the mismatch repair system may have an important role in shaping genome composition...

..melanogaster populations was low (F(ST) = 0.0012). Also a tree of individuals based on the proportion of shared alleles and a model-based clustering method provided no evidence for population substructuring...

..The ln RV test statistic is applied to a data set of 94 loci typed in eight non-African and two African human populations...

..When we introduced one additional mutation process, a length-independent slippage (indel slippage) operating at repeats with few repetitions, our computer simulations captured the observed pattern of microsatellite distribution...

..We conclude that system complexity provides a buffer against stochastic effects...

..melanogaster genes did. If sexual selection is driving molecular evolution of male-biased genes, our data imply a radically different selection regime in D. pseudoobscura...