Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments
Yakutia, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian Far East, represents one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter record temperatures dropping below -70 °C. Nevertheless, Yakutian horses survive all year round in the open air due to striking phenotypic adaptations, including compact body conformations,...
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ftdatacite:10.7892/boris.73433 2023-05-15T15:13:40+02:00 Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments Lorente-Galdos, Belen Tsygankova, Svetlana McCue, Molly Alfarhan, Ahmed H. Boulygina, Eugenia Kantanen, Juha Marques-Bonet, Tomas Librado, Pablo Neuditschko, Markus Grigoriev, Semyon Rubin, Edward M. Sicheritz-Ponten, Thomas Slatkin, Montgomery Jónsson, Hákon Al-Rasheid, Khaled A. S. Nielsen, Rasmus Popov, Ruslan Alekseev, Anatoly N. Schubert, Mikkel Ermini, Luca Crubézy, Eric Orlando, Ludovic Leeb, Tosso Albrechtsen, Anders Nedoluzhko, Artem Mortensen, Cecilie D. Alquraishi, Saleh A. Tikhonov, Alexei Yang, Melinda A. Seguin-Orlando, Andaine Fumagalli, Matteo Rieder, Stefan Der Sarkissian, Clio Gamba, Cristina Thèves, Catherine Petersen, Bent Willerslev, Eske Jagannathan, Vidhya Hoover, Cindi A. Prokhortchouk, Egor 2015 application/pdf https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.73433 http://boris.unibe.ch/73433/ en eng National Academy of Sciences NAS info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess 590 Animals Zoology 570 Life sciences; biology 630 Agriculture Text article-journal ScholarlyArticle 2015 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.7892/boris.73433 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Yakutia, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian Far East, represents one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter record temperatures dropping below -70 °C. Nevertheless, Yakutian horses survive all year round in the open air due to striking phenotypic adaptations, including compact body conformations, extremely hairy winter coats, and acute seasonal differences in metabolic activities. The evolutionary origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis of their adaptations remain, however, contentious. Here, we present the complete genomes of nine present-day Yakutian horses and two ancient specimens dating from the early 19th century and ∼5,200 y ago. By comparing these genomes with the genomes of two Late Pleistocene, 27 domesticated, and three wild Przewalski's horses, we find that contemporary Yakutian horses do not descend from the native horses that populated the region until the mid-Holocene, but were most likely introduced following the migration of the Yakut people a few centuries ago. Thus, they represent one of the fastest cases of adaptation to the extreme temperatures of the Arctic. We find cis-regulatory mutations to have contributed more than nonsynonymous changes to their adaptation, likely due to the comparatively limited standing variation within gene bodies at the time the population was founded. Genes involved in hair development, body size, and metabolic and hormone signaling pathways represent an essential part of the Yakutian horse adaptive genetic toolkit. Finally, we find evidence for convergent evolution with native human populations and woolly mammoths, suggesting that only a few evolutionary strategies are compatible with survival in extremely cold environments. Text Arctic Sakha Republic Subarctic Yakutia DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic Sakha |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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590 Animals Zoology 570 Life sciences; biology 630 Agriculture |
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590 Animals Zoology 570 Life sciences; biology 630 Agriculture Lorente-Galdos, Belen Tsygankova, Svetlana McCue, Molly Alfarhan, Ahmed H. Boulygina, Eugenia Kantanen, Juha Marques-Bonet, Tomas Librado, Pablo Neuditschko, Markus Grigoriev, Semyon Rubin, Edward M. Sicheritz-Ponten, Thomas Slatkin, Montgomery Jónsson, Hákon Al-Rasheid, Khaled A. S. Nielsen, Rasmus Popov, Ruslan Alekseev, Anatoly N. Schubert, Mikkel Ermini, Luca Crubézy, Eric Orlando, Ludovic Leeb, Tosso Albrechtsen, Anders Nedoluzhko, Artem Mortensen, Cecilie D. Alquraishi, Saleh A. Tikhonov, Alexei Yang, Melinda A. Seguin-Orlando, Andaine Fumagalli, Matteo Rieder, Stefan Der Sarkissian, Clio Gamba, Cristina Thèves, Catherine Petersen, Bent Willerslev, Eske Jagannathan, Vidhya Hoover, Cindi A. Prokhortchouk, Egor Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
topic_facet |
590 Animals Zoology 570 Life sciences; biology 630 Agriculture |
description |
Yakutia, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian Far East, represents one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter record temperatures dropping below -70 °C. Nevertheless, Yakutian horses survive all year round in the open air due to striking phenotypic adaptations, including compact body conformations, extremely hairy winter coats, and acute seasonal differences in metabolic activities. The evolutionary origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis of their adaptations remain, however, contentious. Here, we present the complete genomes of nine present-day Yakutian horses and two ancient specimens dating from the early 19th century and ∼5,200 y ago. By comparing these genomes with the genomes of two Late Pleistocene, 27 domesticated, and three wild Przewalski's horses, we find that contemporary Yakutian horses do not descend from the native horses that populated the region until the mid-Holocene, but were most likely introduced following the migration of the Yakut people a few centuries ago. Thus, they represent one of the fastest cases of adaptation to the extreme temperatures of the Arctic. We find cis-regulatory mutations to have contributed more than nonsynonymous changes to their adaptation, likely due to the comparatively limited standing variation within gene bodies at the time the population was founded. Genes involved in hair development, body size, and metabolic and hormone signaling pathways represent an essential part of the Yakutian horse adaptive genetic toolkit. Finally, we find evidence for convergent evolution with native human populations and woolly mammoths, suggesting that only a few evolutionary strategies are compatible with survival in extremely cold environments. |
format |
Text |
author |
Lorente-Galdos, Belen Tsygankova, Svetlana McCue, Molly Alfarhan, Ahmed H. Boulygina, Eugenia Kantanen, Juha Marques-Bonet, Tomas Librado, Pablo Neuditschko, Markus Grigoriev, Semyon Rubin, Edward M. Sicheritz-Ponten, Thomas Slatkin, Montgomery Jónsson, Hákon Al-Rasheid, Khaled A. S. Nielsen, Rasmus Popov, Ruslan Alekseev, Anatoly N. Schubert, Mikkel Ermini, Luca Crubézy, Eric Orlando, Ludovic Leeb, Tosso Albrechtsen, Anders Nedoluzhko, Artem Mortensen, Cecilie D. Alquraishi, Saleh A. Tikhonov, Alexei Yang, Melinda A. Seguin-Orlando, Andaine Fumagalli, Matteo Rieder, Stefan Der Sarkissian, Clio Gamba, Cristina Thèves, Catherine Petersen, Bent Willerslev, Eske Jagannathan, Vidhya Hoover, Cindi A. Prokhortchouk, Egor |
author_facet |
Lorente-Galdos, Belen Tsygankova, Svetlana McCue, Molly Alfarhan, Ahmed H. Boulygina, Eugenia Kantanen, Juha Marques-Bonet, Tomas Librado, Pablo Neuditschko, Markus Grigoriev, Semyon Rubin, Edward M. Sicheritz-Ponten, Thomas Slatkin, Montgomery Jónsson, Hákon Al-Rasheid, Khaled A. S. Nielsen, Rasmus Popov, Ruslan Alekseev, Anatoly N. Schubert, Mikkel Ermini, Luca Crubézy, Eric Orlando, Ludovic Leeb, Tosso Albrechtsen, Anders Nedoluzhko, Artem Mortensen, Cecilie D. Alquraishi, Saleh A. Tikhonov, Alexei Yang, Melinda A. Seguin-Orlando, Andaine Fumagalli, Matteo Rieder, Stefan Der Sarkissian, Clio Gamba, Cristina Thèves, Catherine Petersen, Bent Willerslev, Eske Jagannathan, Vidhya Hoover, Cindi A. Prokhortchouk, Egor |
author_sort |
Lorente-Galdos, Belen |
title |
Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
title_short |
Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
title_full |
Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
title_fullStr |
Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
title_full_unstemmed |
Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
title_sort |
tracking the origins of yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments |
publisher |
National Academy of Sciences NAS |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.73433 http://boris.unibe.ch/73433/ |
geographic |
Arctic Sakha |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Sakha |
genre |
Arctic Sakha Republic Subarctic Yakutia |
genre_facet |
Arctic Sakha Republic Subarctic Yakutia |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7892/boris.73433 |
_version_ |
1766344189643063296 |