Intergenic Co-evolution in Primates: Co-ordinated mutational paytterns in the Genetic Architecture of Lifespan and Body Mass

Identifier:  TFM:2519

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFM2519

Authors:  Hajimoradkhani, Mohammadmahdi

Abstract:
The genetic architecture of complex traits is a quintessential area of modern biology. We have leveraged 230 primate genomes where convergent amino acid substitutions have been identified in 883 genes for lifespan and 213 genes for body mass and studied the co-evolution of these genes as a system for each dataset independently. We have used simulations to assess the statistical significance of pairwise co-evolution between intergenic CAAS pairs and to quantify the deviation from the observed amount of co-evolution from what is expected under a random model. We have further found that the co-transitions are associative, suggesting potential epistasis.