Prehistoric genomes reveal the genetic foundation and cost of horse domestication

Schubert, Mikkel; Jónsson, Hákon; Chang, Dan; Der Sarkissian, Clio; Ermini, Luca; Ginolhac, Aurélien; Albrechtsen, Anders; Dupanloup, Isabelle; Foucal, Adrien; Petersen, Bent; Fumagalli, Matteo; Raghavan, Maanasa; Seguin-Orlando, Andaine; Korneliussen, Thorfinn S.; Velazquez, Amhed M. V.; Stenderup, Jesper; Hoover, Cindi A.; Rubin, Carl-Johan; Alfarhan, Ahmed H.; Alquraishi, Saleh A.; ... (2014). Prehistoric genomes reveal the genetic foundation and cost of horse domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - PNAS, 111(52), E5661-E5669. National Academy of Sciences NAS 10.1073/pnas.1416991111

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The domestication of the horse revolutionized warfare, trade, and the exchange of people and ideas. This at least 5,500-y-long process, which ultimately transformed wild horses into the hundreds of breeds living today, is difficult to reconstruct from archeological data and modern genetics alone. We therefore sequenced two complete horse genomes, predating domestication by thousands of years, to characterize the genetic footprint of domestication. These ancient genomes reveal predomestic population structure and a significant fraction of genetic variation shared with the domestic breeds but absent from Przewalski’s horses. We find positive selection on genes involved in various aspects of locomotion, physiology, and cognition. Finally, we show that modern horse genomes contain an excess of deleterious mutations, likely representing the genetic cost of domestication.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Population Genetics
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)

UniBE Contributor:

Duperret, Isabelle, Foucal, Adrien, Excoffier, Laurent

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology

ISSN:

0027-8424

Publisher:

National Academy of Sciences NAS

Language:

English

Submitter:

Isabelle Duperret

Date Deposited:

10 Sep 2015 13:36

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:49

Publisher DOI:

10.1073/pnas.1416991111

PubMed ID:

25512547

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.71402

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/71402

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