Abstract
Extreme population differentiation, as measured by the FST value, has been suggested as an indicator of recent population-specific positive selection. Elevated FST values indicating high differentiation between continental groups were previously reported on a linkage disequilibrium region in the Neuregulin 1 gene, a gene which has been associated to schizophrenia. In the present study we show evidence that high FST values may not necessarily imply the action of selection, in particular positive selection, neither globally nor regionally, using the example of the NRG1 gene.
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References
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Acknowledgments
We thank Nicolás Bellora, Anna Ferrer, and Andrés Moreno, Universitat Pompeu Fabra for constructive comments; the technical help of Anna González-Neira in the Centro Nacional de Genotipación, Madrid; and Howard Cann for his effort providing the CEPH samples. The present study was supported by the Dirección General de Investigación, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Spain (BFU2004-04208/BMC and BFU2006-01235/BMC), Direcció General de Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya (2005SGR/00608) and “Fundación Genoma España” (proyectos piloto CEGEN 2004–2005). M.G. received a fellowship (2004FI-IQUC2/0047) from the International Graduate School of Catalunya (Generalitat de Catalunya).
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Gardner, M., Williamson, S., Casals, F. et al. Extreme individual marker FST values do not imply population-specific selection in humans: the NRG1 example. Hum Genet 121, 759–762 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-007-0364-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-007-0364-9