Determinants of de novo mutations in extended pedigrees of 43 dog breeds

Abstract

Intensive breeding of dogs has had dramatic effects on genetic variants underlying phenotypes. To investigate whether this also affected mutation rates, we deep-sequenced pedigrees from 43 different dog breeds representing 404 trios. We find that the mutation rate is remarkably stable across breeds and is predominantly influenced by variation in parental ages. The effect of paternal age per year on mutation rates is approximately 1.5 times greater in dogs than humans, suggesting that the elevated yearly mutation rate in dogs is only partially attributed to earlier reproduction. While there is no significant effect of breeds on the overall mutation rate, larger breeds accumulate proportionally more mutations earlier in development than small breeds. Interestingly, we find a 2.6 times greater mutation rate in CG Islands (CGIs) compared to the remaining genome in dogs, unlike humans, where there is no difference. Our estimated rate of mutation by recombination in dogs is more than 10 times larger than estimates in humans. We ascribe these to the fact that canids have lost PRDM9-directed recombination and draw away recombination from CGIs. In conclusion, our study sheds light on stability of mutation processes and disparities in mutation accumulation rates reflecting the influence of differences in growth patterns among breeds, and the impact of PRDM9 gene loss on the de novo mutations of canids.