TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ludwig, Arne
A1  - Reissmann, Monika
A1  - Benecke, Norbert
A1  - Bellone, Rebecca
A1  - Sandoval-Castellanos, Edson
A1  - Cieslak, Michael
A1  - González-Fortes, Gloria M.
A1  - Morales-Muniz, Arturo
A1  - Hofreiter, Michael
A1  - Pruvost, Melanie
T1  - Twenty-five thousand years of fluctuating selection on leopard complex spotting and congenital night blindness in horses
JF  - Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London : B, Biological sciences
N2  - Leopard complex spotting is inherited by the incompletely dominant locus, LP, which also causes congenital stationary night blindness in homozygous horses. We investigated an associated single nucleotide polymorphism in the TRPM1 gene in 96 archaeological bones from 31 localities from Late Pleistocene (approx. 17 000 YBP) to medieval times. The first genetic evidence of LP spotting in Europe dates back to the Pleistocene. We tested for temporal changes in the LP associated allele frequency and estimated coefficients of selection by means of approximate Bayesian computation analyses. Our results show that at least some of the observed frequency changes are congruent with shifts in artificial selection pressure for the leopard complex spotting phenotype. In early domestic horses from Kirklareli-Kanligecit (Turkey) dating to 2700-2200 BC, a remarkably high number of leopard spotted horses (six of 10 individuals) was detected including one adult homozygote. However, LP seems to have largely disappeared during the late Bronze Age, suggesting selection against this phenotype in early domestic horses. During the Iron Age, LP reappeared, probably by reintroduction into the domestic gene pool from wild animals. This picture of alternating selective regimes might explain how genetic diversity was maintained in domestic animals despite selection for specific traits at different times.
KW  - ancient DNA
KW  - coat colour
KW  - domestication
KW  - Equus
KW  - palaeogenetics
KW  - population
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0386
SN  - 0962-8436
SN  - 1471-2970
VL  - 370
IS  - 1660
PB  - Royal Society
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Xiang, Hai
A1  - Gao, Jianqiang
A1  - Yu, Baoquan
A1  - Zhou, Hui
A1  - Cai, Dawei
A1  - Zhang, Youwen
A1  - Chen, Xiaoyong
A1  - Wang, Xi
A1  - Hofreiter, Michael
A1  - Zhao, Xingbo
T1  - Early Holocene chicken domestication in northern China
JF  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
N2  - Chickens represent by far the most important poultry species, yet the number, locations, and timings of their domestication have remained controversial for more than a century. Here we report ancient mitochondrial DNA sequences from the earliest archaeological chicken bones from China, dating back to similar to 10,000 B.P. The results clearly show that all investigated bones, including the oldest from the Nanzhuangtou site, are derived from the genus Gallus, rather than any other related genus, such as Phasianus. Our analyses also suggest that northern China represents one region of the earliest chicken domestication, possibly dating as early as 10,000 y B.P. Similar to the evidence from pig domestication, our results suggest that these early domesticated chickens contributed to the gene pool of modern chicken populations. Moreover, our results support the idea that multiple members of the genus Gallus, specifically Gallus gallus and Gallus sonneratii contributed to the gene pool of the modern domestic chicken. Our results provide further support for the growing evidence of an early mixed agricultural complex in northern China.
KW  - ancient DNA
KW  - chicken
KW  - domestication
KW  - species origin
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411882111
SN  - 0027-8424
VL  - 111
IS  - 49
SP  - 17564
EP  - 17569
PB  - National Acad. of Sciences
CY  - Washington
ER  -