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Models for the development of species distribution in Europe typically invoke restriction in three temperate Mediterranean refugia during glaciations, from where recolonization of central and northern Europe occurred. The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is one of the taxa from which this model is derived. Sequence data generated from brown bear fossils show a complex phylogeographical history for western European populations. Long-term isolation in separate refugia is not required to explain our data when considering the palaeontological distribution of brown bears. We propose continuous gene flow across southern Europe, from which brown bear populations expanded after the last glaciation.

It is increasingly recognized that insertions and deletions(indels) are an important source of genetic as well as phenotypicdivergence and diversity. We analyzed length polymorphisms identifiedthrough partial (0.25x) shotgun sequencing of three breeds ofdomestic chicken made by the International Chicken PolymorphismMap Consortium. A data set of 140,484 short indel polymorphismsin unique DNA was identified after filtering for microsatellitestructures. There was a significant excess of tandem duplicatesat indel sites, with deletions of a duplicate motif outnumberingthe generation of duplicates through insertion. Indel densitywas lower in microchromosomes than in macrochromosomes, in theZ chromosome than in autosomes, and in 100 bp of upstream sequence,5'-UTR, and first introns than in intergenic DNA and in otherintrons. Indel density was highly correlated with single nucleotidepolymorphism (SNP) density. The mean density of indels in pairwisesequence comparisons was 1.9 x 10^–4 indel events/bp, 5%the density of SNPs segregating in the chicken genome. The greatmajority of indels involved a limited number of nucleotides(median 1 bp), with A-rich motifs being overrepresented at indelsites. The overrepresentation of deletions at tandem duplicatesindicates that replication slippage in duplicate sequences isa common mechanism behind indel mutation. The correlation betweenindel and SNP density indicates common effects of mutation and/orselection on the occurrence of indels and point mutations.

Data from completely sequenced genomes are likely to open the way for novel studies of the genetics of nonmodel organisms, in particular when it comes to the identification and analysis of genes responsible for traits that are under selection in natural populations. Here we use the draft sequence of the chicken genome as a starting point for linkage mapping in a wild bird species, the collared flycatcher-one of the most well-studied avian species in ecological and evolutionary research. A pedigree of 365 flycatchers was established and genotyped for single nucleotide polymorphisms in 23 genes selected from (and spread over most of) the chicken Z chromosome. All genes were also found to be located on the Z chromosome in the collared flycatcher, confirming conserved synteny at the level of gene content across distantly related avian lineages. This high degree of conservation mimics the situation seen for the mammalian X chromosome and may thus be a general feature in sex chromosome evolution, irrespective of whether there is male or female heterogamety. Alternatively, such unprecedented chromosomal conservation may be characteristic of most chromosomes in avian genome evolution. However, several internal rearrangements were observed, meaning that the transfer of map information from chicken to nonmodel bird species cannot always assume conserved gene orders. Interestingly, the rate of recombination on the Z chromosome of collared flycatchers was only similar to 50% that of chicken, challenging the widely held view that birds generally have high recombination rates.

We present here a draft genome sequence of the red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus. Because the chicken is a modern descendant of the dinosaurs and the first non-mammalian amniote to have its genome sequenced, the draft sequence of its genome--composed of approximately one billion base pairs of sequence and an estimated 20,000-23,000 genes--provides a new perspective on vertebrate genome evolution, while also improving the annotation of mammalian genomes. For example, the evolutionary distance between chicken and human provides high specificity in detecting functional elements, both non-coding and coding. Notably, many conserved non-coding sequences are far from genes and cannot be assigned to defined functional classes. In coding regions the evolutionary dynamics of protein domains and orthologous groups illustrate processes that distinguish the lineages leading to birds and mammals. The distinctive properties of avian microchromosomes, together with the inferred patterns of conserved synteny, provide additional insights into vertebrate chromosome architecture.