Molecular population genetics and evolution of Drosophila meiosis genes

While many functional elements of the meiotic process are well characterized in model organisms, the genetic basis of most of the natural phenotypic variation observed in meiotic pathways has not been determined. To begin to address this issue, we characterized patterns of polymorphism and divergence in the protein-coding regions of 33 genes across 31 lines of Drosophila melanogaster and 6 lines of Drosophila simulans. We sequenced genes known to be involved in chromosome segregation, recombination, DNA repair, and related heterochromatin binding. As expected, we found several of the genes to be highly conserved, consistent with purifying selection. However, a subset of genes showed patterns of polymorphism and divergence typical of other types of natural selection. Moreover, several intriguing differences between the two Drosophila lineages were evident: along the D. simulans lineage we consistently found evidence of adaptive protein evolution, whereas along the D. melanogaster lineage several loci exhibited patterns consistent with the maintenance of protein variation.