Ultraconserved elements anchor thousands of genetic markers for target enrichment spanning multiple evolutionary timescales

Although massively parallel sequencing has facilitated large-scale DNA sequencing, comparisons among distantly related species rely upon small portions of the genome that are easily aligned. Methods are needed to efficiently obtain comparable DNA fragments prior to massively parallel sequencing, particularly for biologists working with non-model organisms. We introduce a new class of molecular marker, anchored by ultraconserved genomic elements (UCEs), that universally enable target enrichment and sequencing of thousands of orthologous loci across species separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Our analyses here focus on use of UCE markers in Amniota, because UCEs and phylogenetic relationships are well known in some amniotes. We perform an in silico experiment to demonstrate that sequence flanking 2,030 UCEs contains information sufficient to enable unambiguous recovery of the established primate phylogeny. We extend this experiment by performing an in vitro enrichment...