Haplotype blocks in small populations

Abstract

Data on the human genome are showing conserved haplotype blocks. In order to assess whether these are the footprints of selection or reflect hotspots of recombination, it is first necessary to understand the effects of population history and demography on the survival of ancestral chromosome segments in the absence of these phenomena. In this paper, we present results on the mean and variance of lengths of ancestral segments and shared segments in chromosomes from a current population. In a small population, patterns of growth and population subdivision may have a substantial impact on observed patterns of chromosome segments, and the length distributions have high variance and are heavy-tailed. © Springer-Verlag 2004 References.