Author:
Zheng Zhuqing,Wang Xihong,Li Ming,Li Yunjia,Yang Zhirui,Wang Xiaolong,Pan Xiangyu,Gong Mian,Zhang Yu,Guo Yingwei,Wang Yu,Liu Jing,Cai Yudong,Chen Qiuming,Okpeku Moses,Colli Licia,Cai Dawei,Wang Kun,Huang Shisheng,Sonstegard Tad S.,Esmailizadeh Ali,Zhang Wenguang,Zhang Tingting,Xu Yangbin,Xu Naiyi,Yang Yi,Han Jianlin,Chen Lei,Lesur Joséphine,Daly Kevin G.,Bradley Daniel G.,Heller Rasmus,Zhang Guojie,Wang Wen,Chen Yulin,Jiang Yu
Abstract
AbstractGoat domestication was critical for agriculture and civilization, but its underlying genetic changes and selection regimes remain unclear. Here we analyze the genomes of worldwide domestic goats, wild caprid species and historical remains, providing evidence of an ancient introgression event from a West Caucasian tur-like species to the ancestor of domestic goats. One introgressed locus with a strong signature of selection harbors the MUC6 gene which encodes a gastrointestinally secreted mucin. Experiments revealed that the nearly fixed introgressed haplotype confers enhanced immune resistance to gastrointestinal pathogens. Another locus with a strong signal of selection may be related to behavior. The selected alleles at these two loci emerged in domestic goats at least 7,200 and 8,100 years ago, respectively, and increased to high frequencies concurrent with the expansion of the ubiquitous modern mitochondrial haplogroup A. Tracking these archaeologically cryptic evolutionary transformations provides new insights into the mechanism of animal domestication.One Sentence SummaryGoat domestication mainly focused on immune and neural genes, with adaptive leaps driven by introgression and selection.
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory