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Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25859046
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Comparative Study
. 2015 Apr 10;348(6231):242-245.
doi: 10.1126/science.aaa3952. Epub 2015 Apr 9.

Mountain gorilla genomes reveal the impact of long-term population decline and inbreeding

Yali Xue #  1 , Javier Prado-Martinez #  2 , Peter H Sudmant #  3 , Vagheesh Narasimhan #  1   4 , Qasim Ayub  1 , Michal Szpak  1 , Peter Frandsen  5 , Yuan Chen  1 , Bryndis Yngvadottir  1 , David N Cooper  6 , Marc de Manuel  2 , Jessica Hernandez-Rodriguez  2 , Irene Lobon  2 , Hans R Siegismund  5 , Luca Pagani  1   7 , Michael A Quail  1 , Christina Hvilsom  8 , Antoine Mudakikwa  9 , Evan E Eichler  3   10 , Michael R Cranfield  11 , Tomas Marques-Bonet  2   12 , Chris Tyler-Smith  1 , Aylwyn Scally  13
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Mountain gorilla genomes reveal the impact of long-term population decline and inbreeding

Yali Xue et al. Science. .

Abstract

Mountain gorillas are an endangered great ape subspecies and a prominent focus for conservation, yet we know little about their genomic diversity and evolutionary past. We sequenced whole genomes from multiple wild individuals and compared the genomes of all four Gorilla subspecies. We found that the two eastern subspecies have experienced a prolonged population decline over the past 100,000 years, resulting in very low genetic diversity and an increased overall burden of deleterious variation. A further recent decline in the mountain gorilla population has led to extensive inbreeding, such that individuals are typically homozygous at 34% of their sequence, leading to the purging of severely deleterious recessive mutations from the population. We discuss the causes of their decline and the consequences for their future survival.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Geography, taxonomy and genetic structure of gorilla species
(A) Distribution of gorilla subspecies (2). (B) Gorilla taxonomy. (C) PCA plot of SNP data for all four gorilla subspecies. (D) PCA plot of SNP data from mountain and eastern lowland gorilla samples only. (E) mtDNA and Y-chromosomal phylogenies. Node heights are in units of substitutions per base pair; each tree is drawn to a separate scale.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Linkage disequilibrium and homozygosity in gorillas
(A) LD decay (15) in gorilla and human populations. Human samples are Utah residents with European ancestry (CEU) or Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria (YRI). (B) Mean per-sample genome fractions found in homozygous tracts. Open bars show total fractions for mountain (Gbb), eastern lowland (Gbg), Cross River (Ggd), and western lowland (Ggg) gorillas; solid bars show fractions in tracts of length 2.5 to 10 Mb (gorillas) or 2.5 to 10 cM in an Altai Neandertal and two human individuals [Karitiana (Kar) and Papuan (Pap)] (19). Error bars are ±1 SD.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Ancestral effective population size and gene flow between gorilla populations
(A) Inferred effective population size (Ne) history for each of the samples studied. (B) Cross-population Ne history, based on paired male X-chromosomal sequences. Both plots are scaled using a generation time of 19.3 years and an autosomal mutation rate of 1.25 × 10−8 per base pair per generation.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. The genetic burden of missense mutations and purging of LoF mutations in eastern gorillas
(A) Relative number of derived alleles at LoF (red) and missense (orange) sites that are frequent in one population and not another (15). Error bars represent ±2 SD. (B) Circles indicate the scaled number of LoF variant sites in each population where at least one sample is homozygous for the derived allele. Boxplots show distributions of the same statistic for matched samples of synonymous sites (15); whiskers show 5th and 95th percentiles; P values are the proportion of each sample distribution smaller than the corresponding LoF count. (C) Circles show the rate of LoF variants relative to synonymous variants in homozygous tracts for each sample; diamonds show the same ratio in nonhomozygous regions. Horizontal bars indicate population means; P values for each subspecies correspond to a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for difference in distribution between homozygous and nonhomozygous regions.
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References

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