Purifying Selection Causes Widespread Distortions of Genealogical Structure on the Human X Chromosome

Abstract

The extent to which selective forces shape patterns of genetic and genealogical variation is unknown in many species. Recent theoretical models have suggested that even relatively weak purifying selection may produce significant distortions in gene genealogies, but few studies have sought to quantify this effect in humans. Here, we employ a reconstruction method based on the ancestral recombination graph to infer genealogies across the length of the human X chromosome and to examine time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) and measures of tree imbalance at both broad and very fine scales. In agreement with theory, TMRCA is significantly reduced and genealogies are significantly more imbalanced in coding regions and introns when compared to intergenic regions, and these effects are increased in areas of greater evolutionary constraint. These distortions are present at multiple scales, and chromosomal regions as broad as 5 Mb show a significant negative correlation in TMRCA with exon density. We also show that areas of recent TMRCA are significantly associated with the disease-causing potential of site as measured by the MutationTaster prediction algorithm. Together, these findings suggest that purifying selection has significantly distorted human genealogical structure on both broad and fine scales and that few chromosomal regions escape selection-induced distortions.