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Edited by David M. Hillis, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, and approved November 13, 2014 (received for review September 4, 2014)
Significance
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.
Abstract
The domestication of the horse ∼5.5 kya and the emergence of mounted riding, chariotry, and cavalry dramatically transformed human civilization. However, the genetics underlying horse domestication are difficult to reconstruct, given the near extinction of wild horses. We therefore sequenced two ancient horse genomes from Taymyr, Russia (at 7.4- and 24.3-fold coverage), both predating the earliest archeological evidence of domestication. We compared these genomes with genomes of domesticated horses and the wild Przewalski’s horse and found genetic structure within Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene, with the ancient population contributing significantly to the genetic variation of domesticated breeds. We furthermore identified a conservative set of 125 potential domestication targets using four complementary scans for genes that have undergone positive selection. One group of genes is involved in muscular and limb development, articular junctions, and the cardiac system, and may represent physiological adaptations to human utilization. A second group consists of genes with cognitive functions, including social behavior, learning capabilities, fear response, and agreeableness, which may have been key for taming horses. We also found that domestication is associated with inbreeding and an excess of deleterious mutations. This genetic load is in line with the “cost of domestication” hypothesis also reported for rice, tomatoes, and dogs, and it is generally attributed to the relaxation of purifying selection resulting from the strong demographic bottlenecks accompanying domestication. Our work demonstrates the power of ancient genomes to reconstruct the complex genetic changes that transformed wild animals into their domesticated forms, and the population context in which this process took place.
Footnotes
↵1M.S., H.J., and D.C. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: Lorlando{at}snm.ku.dk.
Author contributions: R.N., L. Excoffier, B.S., and L.O. designed research; M.S., H.J., D.C., A.G., I.D., A.F., M.R., A.S.-O., J.S., C.A.H., and L.O. performed research; C.-J.R., A.H.A., S.A.A., K.A.S.A.-R., D.E.M., T.K., J.N.M., E.M.R., T.S.-P., L.A., M.H., T.M.-B., M.T.P.G., R.N., L. Excoffier, E.W., B.S., and L.O. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; M.S., H.J., D.C., C.D.S., L. Ermini, A.G., A.A., I.D., A.F., B.P., M.F., T.S.K., A.M.V.V., L. Excoffier, and L.O. analyzed data; and M.S., H.J., D.C., M.H., B.S., and L.O. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: Sequence data generated for this study (samples CGG10022 and CGG10023) have been deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive (accession no. PRJEB7537).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1416991111/-/DCSupplemental.
Genetic foundation of horse domestication
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