Dillon Megan N, Dickey Allison N, Roberts Reade B, Betz Jennifer A, Mousseau Timothy A, Kleiman Norman J, Breen Matthew
Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States of America.
Bioinformatics Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Dec 27;19(12):e0315244. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0315244. eCollection 2024.
Environmental contamination can have lasting impacts on surrounding communities, though the long-term impacts can be difficult to ascertain. The disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 and subsequent remediation efforts resulted in contamination of the local environment with radioactive material, heavy metals, and additional environmental toxicants. Many of these are mutagenic in nature, and the full effect of these exposures on local flora and fauna has yet to be understood. Several hundred free-roaming dogs occupy the contaminated area surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and previous studies have highlighted a striking level of genetic differentiation between two geographically close populations of these dogs. With this work, we investigate mutation as a possible driver of this genetic differentiation. First, we consider large-scale mutation by assessing the karyotypic architecture of these dogs. We then search for evidence of mutation through short tandem repeat/microsatellite diversity analyses and by calculating the proportion of recently derived alleles in individuals in both populations. Through these analyses, we do not find evidence of differential mutation accumulation for these populations. Thus, we find no evidence that an increased mutation rate is driving the genetic differentiation between these two Chornobyl populations. The dog populations at Chornobyl present a unique opportunity for studying the genetic effects of the long-term exposures they have encountered, and this study expands and builds on previous work done in the area.
环境污染会对周边社区产生持久影响，尽管其长期影响可能难以确定。1986年切尔诺贝利核电站事故及随后的补救工作导致当地环境受到放射性物质、重金属和其他环境毒物的污染。其中许多物质本质上具有致突变性，而这些暴露对当地动植物的全面影响尚未可知。几百只自由放养的狗生活在切尔诺贝利核电站周边的污染区域，此前的研究突出显示了这些狗的两个地理上相近的种群之间存在显著的遗传分化水平。通过这项研究，我们调查突变是否是这种遗传分化的一个可能驱动因素。首先，我们通过评估这些狗的核型结构来考虑大规模突变。然后，我们通过短串联重复序列/微卫星多样性分析以及计算两个种群中个体最近衍生等位基因的比例来寻找突变的证据。通过这些分析，我们没有发现这些种群存在差异突变积累的证据。因此，我们没有发现证据表明突变率增加是导致切尔诺贝利这两个狗种群之间遗传分化的原因。切尔诺贝利的狗种群为研究它们所经历的长期暴露的遗传效应提供了一个独特的机会，并且这项研究扩展并基于该领域之前所做的工作。
