Large-scale recombination rate patterns are conserved among human populations

In humans, most recombination events occur in a small fraction of the genome. These hotspots of recombination show considerable variation in intensity and/or location across species and, potentially, across human populations. On a larger scale, the patterns of recombination rates have been mostly investigated in individuals of European ancestry, and it remains unknown whether the results obtained can be directly applied to other human populations. Here, we investigate this question using genome-wide polymorphism data. We show that population recombination rates recapitulate a large part of the genetic map information, regardless of the population considered. We also show that the ratio of the population recombination rate estimate of two populations is overall constant along the chromosomes. These two observations support the hypothesis that large-scale recombination patterns are conserved across human populations. Local deviations from the overall pattern of conservation of the recombination rates can be used to select candidate regions with large polymorphic inversions or under local selection.