Research Group Molecular Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2011 Aug 23;2:450. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1447.
Modern domestic horses display abundant genetic diversity within female-inherited mitochondrial DNA, but practically no sequence diversity on the male-inherited Y chromosome. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this discrepancy, but can only be tested through knowledge of the diversity in both the ancestral (pre-domestication) maternal and paternal lineages. As wild horses are practically extinct, ancient DNA studies offer the only means to assess this ancestral diversity. Here we show considerable ancestral diversity in ancient male horses by sequencing 4 kb of Y chromosomal DNA from eight ancient wild horses and one 2,800-year-old domesticated horse. Both ancient and modern domestic horses form a separate branch from the ancient wild horses, with the Przewalski horse at its base. Our methodology establishes the feasibility of re-sequencing long ancient nuclear DNA fragments and demonstrates the power of ancient Y chromosome DNA sequence data to provide insights into the evolutionary history of populations.
现代家养马在雌性遗传的线粒体 DNA 中表现出丰富的遗传多样性，但在雄性遗传的 Y 染色体上几乎没有序列多样性。已经提出了几个假设来解释这种差异，但只能通过对祖先（驯化前）母系和父系的多样性的了解来检验。由于野马实际上已经灭绝，古代 DNA 研究提供了评估这种祖先多样性的唯一手段。在这里，我们通过对 8 匹古代野马和 1 匹 2800 年前的驯化马的 Y 染色体 DNA 进行 4 kb 的测序，展示了古代雄性马中相当大的祖先多样性。古代和现代的家养马都与古代野马形成了一个单独的分支，其中普氏野马是其基础。我们的方法确立了重新测序长的古代核 DNA 片段的可行性，并证明了古代 Y 染色体 DNA 序列数据在深入了解种群进化历史方面的强大功能。
