Recent Activity in Expanding Populations and Purifying Selection Have Shaped Transposable Element Landscapes across Natural Accessions of the Mediterranean Grass Brachypodium distachyon
Journal: Genome Biology and Evolution
Year: 2017

Transposable element (TE) activity has emerged as a major cause of variation in genome size and structure among species. To what extent TEs contribute to genetic variation and divergence within species, however, is much less clear, mainly because population genomic data have so far only been available for the classical model organisms. In this study, we use the annual Mediterranean grass Brachypodium distachyon to investigate TE dynamics in natural populations. Using whole-genome sequencing data