@article { , title = {Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears}, abstract = {Polar bears are uniquely adapted to life in the High Arctic and have undergone drastic physiological changes in response to Arctic climates and a hyperlipid diet of primarily marine mammal prey. We analyzed 89 complete genomes of polar bear and brown bear using population genomic modeling and show that the species diverged only 479-343 thousand years BP. We find that genes on the polar bear lineage have been under stronger positive selection than in brown bears; nine of the top 16 genes under strong positive selection are associated with cardiomyopathy and vascular disease, implying important reorganization of the cardiovascular system. One of the genes showing the strongest evidence of selection, APOB, encodes the primary lipoprotein component of low-density lipoprotein (LDL); functional mutations in APOB may explain how polar bears are able to cope with life-long elevated LDL levels that are associated with high risk of heart disease in humans. PaperClip © 2014 Elsevier Inc.}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.054}, eissn = {1097-4172}, issn = {0092-8674}, issue = {4}, journal = {Cell}, pages = {785-794}, publicationstatus = {Published}, publisher = {Elsevier (Cell Press)}, url = {https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1623062}, volume = {157}, year = {2014}, author = {Liu, Shiping and Lorenzen, Eline D. and Fumagalli, Matteo and Li, Bo and Harris, Kelley and Xiong, Zijun and Zhou, Long and Korneliussen, Thorfinn Sand and Somel, Mehmet and Babbitt, Courtney and Wray, Greg and Li, Jianwen and He, Weiming and Wang, Zhuo and Fu, Wenjing and Morgan, Claire C. and Doherty, Aoife and O'Connell, Mary J. and McInerney, James O. and Born, Erik W. and Dalén, Love and Dietz, Rune and Orlando, Ludovic and Sonne, Christian and Xiang, Xueyan and Zhang, Guojie and Nielsen, Rasmus and Willerslev, Eske and Wang, Jun} }