PSMC (pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent) analysis of RAD (restriction site associated DNA) sequencing data

The pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent (PSMC) method uses the genome sequence of a single individual to estimate demographic history covering a time span of thousands of generations. Although originally designed for whole-genome data, we here use simulations to investigate its applicability to reference genome-aligned restriction site associated DNA (RAD) data. We find that RAD data can potentially be used for PSMC analysis, but at present with limitations. The key factor is the proportion (p) of the genome that the RAD data covers. In our simulations, a proportion of 10% can still retain a substantial amount of coalescent information, whereas for 1% estimation becomes unreliable. The performance depends strongly on mutation rate (μ) and recombination rate (r) and is proportional to μ*p/r. When the value of this term is low, increasing the amount of data and number of iterations helps restoring the power of the estimation. We subsequently analyse one whole-genome-sequenced and 1...