The origin of domestication genes in goats
Zhuqing Zheng, Xihong Wang, Ming Li, Yunjia Li, Zhirui Yang, Xiaolong Wang, Xiangyu Pan, Mian Gong, Yu Zhang, Yingwei Guo, Yu Wang, Jing Liu, Yudong Cai, Qiuming Chen, Moses Okpeku, Licia Colli, Dawei Cai, Kun Wang, Shisheng Huang, Tad S. Sonstegard, Ali Esmailizadeh, Wenguang Zhang, Tingting Zhang, Yangbin Xu, Naiyi Xu, Yi Yang, Jianlin Han, Lei Chen, Joséphine Lesur, Kevin G. Daly, Daniel G. Bradley, Rasmus Heller, Guojie Zhang, Wen Wang, Yulin Chen, Yu Jiang
Abstract
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 7200 and 8100 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 mechanisms of animal domestication.