Exploring the genome of Norway spruce(Picea abies) in Swedish/Finnish populations

Pattern of Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) is a major factor largely determining the power of association mapping studies. Along with nucleotide diversities and DNA polymorphism, knowledge of patterns of LD along the genome needs to be to known to effectively design association mapping studies. In this study, patterns of nucleotide diversity, population structure, LD was estimated in Norway spruce (Picea abies). The data used for this were 23 nuclear loci sequenced in around 90 individuals originating from natural populations of Norway spruce throughout the current distribution range in Sweden and Finland. The observed levels of nucleotide diversity are variable among loci varying between 0.002 and 0.008 if measured by average pairwise nucleotide diversity. Despite the samples stretching large part of Finland and Sweden there were no evidence for strong population structure. As in earlier studies LD decays fast with distance and the average pattern of the squared correlation of allele frequencies drops to less than 0.2 within 100bp. In order to put the data in perspective previously generated data sets were re-analyzed and compared to the inferred results.