Food Engineering / Gıda Mühendisliği

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11147/12

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  • Editorial
    Citation - WoS: 2
    Citation - Scopus: 2
    Editorial: Population Genomics and Adaptation To Novel Environments: Challenges and Opportunities
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2023) Matur, Ferhat; Keskin, Emre; Sezgin, Efe
    Understanding how organisms adapt to novel environments is an active Research Topic in ecological and evolutionary studies. Most ecological and evolutionary studies focus on how organisms find food (utilization of ecological resources), how they avoid being the food (avoidance of predators), or form the next generation (reproductive strategies) in changing environmental conditions. Yet, some novel environments may present with extreme challenges that organisms may need to evolve novel metabolic pathways even just to exist. Population genomics methods can offer reliable estimates of basic population characteristics such as effective population size, inbreeding, demographic history, and population structure, all of which are also important for conservation efforts. Furthermore, population genomics studies can pinpoint specific genetic loci and variants that are under selection for a populations’ ability to evolve and adapt in response to environmental change and manage adaptive variation. The last 10 years have seen a rise in the study of population genetics of non-model organisms, and the findings of this research are increasingly being applied to the conservation and management of wildlife. To understand population genetics and adaptations, it is equally crucial to share and disseminate the research done using these techniques.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 2
    Citation - Scopus: 2
    Diverse Selection Pressures Shaping the Genetic Architecture of Behçet Disease Susceptibility
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2022) Sezgin, Efe; Kaplan, Elif
    Behçet disease (BD) is a polygenic, multifactorial, multisystem inflammatory condition with unknown etiology. Global distribution of BD is geographically structured, highest prevalence observed among East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean populations. Although adaptive selection on a few BD susceptibility loci is speculated, a thorough evolutionary analysis on the genetic architecture of BD is lacking. We aimed to understand whether increased BD risk in the human populations with high prevalence is due to past selection on BD associated genes. We performed population genetics analyses with East Asian (high BD prevalence), European (low/very low BD prevalence), and African (very low/no BD prevalence) populations. Comparison of ancestral and derived alleles’ frequencies versus their reported susceptible or protective effect on BD showed both derived and ancestral alleles are associated with increased BD risk. Variants showing higher risk to and more significant association with BD had smaller allele frequency differences, and showed less population differentiation compared to variants that showed smaller risk and less significant association with BD. Results suggest BD alleles are not unique to East Asians but are also found in other world populations at appreciable frequencies, and argue against selection favoring these variants only in populations with high BD prevalence. BD associated gene analyses showed similar evolutionary histories driven by neutral processes for many genes or balancing selection for HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) genes in all three populations studied. However, nucleotide diversity in several HLA region genes was much higher in East Asians suggesting selection for high nucleotide and haplotype diversity in East Asians. Recent selective sweep for genes involved in antigen recognition, peptide processing, immune and cellular differentiation regulation was observed only in East Asians. We conclude that the evolutionary processes shaping the genetic diversity in BD risk genes are diverse, and elucidating the underlying specific selection mechanisms is complex. Several of the genes examined in this study are risk factors (such as ERAP1, IL23R, HLA-G) for other inflammatory diseases. Thus, our conclusions are not only limited to BD but may have broader implications for other inflammatory diseases.