Genome Sharing in Small Populations

Abstract

The haplotype structure of a population derives from the recombination events in meioses that are ancestral to current population members. In very small populations of conservation importance, the extent of genome survival depends also on recombination which distributes founder genome across the population. Relative to a founder population, a junction is a recombination point between genomes of different founder origins. In comparing two extant genomes, the segments shared IBD will be bounded by external junctions and may include internal junctions shared by both genomes. Thus IBD tracts are made up of a random number of segments bounded by junctions. A study of the process of internal and external junction types along pairs of chromosomes sampled from a population leads to new results on the variance of lengths of genome shared between relatives. This research is based on work with Dr. N. Chapman.