Figure 3.

Size distribution of inversions and copy number variants. The size distribution of inversions reported in the Database of Genomic Variants (a) shows that the majority of inversions reported to date are in the 10 to 100 kb size bin. The size distribution of inversions differs from that reported for copy number variants (CNVs) (b) The CNV data plotted here show the 11,700 non-redundant CNV events reported by Conrad et al. [13]. It is currently unclear whether the difference in size distribution between inversions and CNVs is due to ascertainment bias, or whether there is an actual biological difference in size distribution. Both cytogenetic data and evolutionary comparative genomic data indicate that large inversions are less detrimental than large deletions and duplications.