Meeting Abstract
Structural variation has been shown to be a major source of genomic polymorphism and evolutionary novelty, including adaptive evolution. The African cichlids, known as one of the most explosive examples of an adaptive radiation, offer an excellent model with which to study the genetic basis of adaptation and diversification in Vertebrates. The recent genome sequencing for 5 species of African cichlids provided the key genomic resources to develop an array based Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) to analyze the structural variation at the whole genome level across African cichlids lineages. We use a novel “genecentric” high-density multi-species microarray platform with probes space at intervals of approximately 6Kb. This should allow detection of structural variation of 30-60Kb. Here, we used this high-density array platform to analyze genome level CNV among the 5 previously sequenced cichlid species, representing three major evolutionary lineages of African Cichlids. To estimate the level of CNV polymorphism, individuals from natural populations of each species have been analyzed and compared to the populations from the sequenced individuals. We also quantify copy number variation across a broad phylogenetic range of 50 African cichlids. We infer copy number status for each of the species as well as shared status among related clades. We then map the copy number status to the current mitochondrial phylogeny for the 50 species in order to determine the evolutionary history of copy number variation among cichlids and its relationship to adaptive radiation.
