Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs.

Bergström A, Stanton DWG, Taron UH, Frantz L, Sinding MS, Ersmark E, Pfrengle S, Cassatt-Johnstone M, Lebrasseur O, Girdland-Flink L, Fernandes DM, Ollivier M, Speidel L, Gopalakrishnan S, Westbury MV, Ramos-Madrigal J, Feuerborn TR, Reiter E, Gretzinger J, Münzel SC, Swali P, Conard NJ, Carøe C, Haile J, Linderholm A, Androsov S, Barnes I, Baumann C, Benecke N, Bocherens H, Brace S, Carden RF, Drucker DG, Fedorov S, Gasparik M, Germonpré M, Grigoriev S, Groves P, Hertwig ST, Ivanova VV, Janssens L, Jennings RP, Kasparov AK, Kirillova IV, Kurmaniyazov I, Kuzmin YV, Kosintsev PA, Lázničková-Galetová M, Leduc C, Nikolskiy P, Nussbaumer M, O'Drisceoil C, Orlando L, Outram A, Pavlova EY, Perri AR, Pilot M, Pitulko VV, Plotnikov VV, Protopopov AV, Rehazek A, Sablin M, Seguin-Orlando A, Storå J, Verjux C, Zaibert VF, Zazula G, Crombé P, Hansen AJ, Willerslev E, Leonard JA, Götherström A, Pinhasi R, Schuenemann VJ, Hofreiter M, Gilbert MTP, Shapiro B, Larson G, Krause J, Dalén L, Skoglund P

Nature 607 (7918) 313-320 [2022-07-00; online 2022-06-29]

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and they remained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day dog lineage (Canis familiaris) lived1-8. Here we analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. We found that wolf populations were highly connected throughout the Late Pleistocene, with levels of differentiation an order of magnitude lower than they are today. This population connectivity allowed us to detect natural selection across the time series, including rapid fixation of mutations in the gene IFT88 40,000-30,000 years ago. We show that dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east. However, we also found that dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves. None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located.

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PubMed 35768506

DOI 10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9

Crossref 10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9

pmc: PMC9279150
pii: 10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9


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