Sheng Gui-Lian, Zheng Ming-Min, Xiao Bo, Yuan Jun-Xia
State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430078, China.
School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430078, China.
Yi Chuan. 2025 Jan;47(1):46-57. doi: 10.16288/j.yczz.24-193.
It has been more than 40 years since the beginning of exploring the genetic composition of ancient organisms from the perspective of ancient DNA. In the recent 20 years, with the development and application of high-throughput sequencing technology platforms and the improved efficiency of retrieving highly fragmented DNA molecules, ancient DNA research moved forward to a brand-new era of deep-time paleogenomics. It not only solved many controversial phylogenetic problems, enriched the migration and evolution details of various organisms including humans, but also launched exploration of the molecular responses to climate changes in terms of "whole genomic-big data-multi-species" level. Moreover, it expanded the sample age from no more than 100,000 years to the Early Pleistocene, ~2 million years ago. Recently, Chinese scientists have made many influential breakthroughs in evolution and migration integration of East Asian populations and thus filled an important gap in the evolutionary process of modern human. Compared to the situation in human paleogenomic studies, less attention has been paid to the study of ancient DNA from vertebrates remains. In this review, we introduce a series of advances in ancient DNA investigations of large mammals in Late Quaternary in China, summarize the research breakthroughs in revealing the systematic evolutionary relationship between ancient and extant groups, gene flow, and molecular responses of mammalian populations to climate change, and explore the opportunities and key challenges in the field of mammalian paleogenomics.
从古代DNA的角度探索古代生物的遗传组成至今已有40多年。在最近的20年里，随着高通量测序技术平台的发展和应用以及高度碎片化DNA分子检索效率的提高，古代DNA研究进入了一个全新的深层古基因组学时代。它不仅解决了许多有争议的系统发育问题，丰富了包括人类在内的各种生物的迁徙和进化细节，还在“全基因组-大数据-多物种”层面展开了对气候变化的分子响应探索。此外，它将样本年代从不超过10万年扩展到了约200万年前的早更新世。最近，中国科学家在东亚人群的进化与迁徙整合方面取得了许多有影响力的突破，填补了现代人类进化过程中的一个重要空白。与人类古基因组研究的情况相比，脊椎动物遗骸的古代DNA研究受到的关注较少。在这篇综述中，我们介绍了中国晚更新世大型哺乳动物古代DNA研究的一系列进展，总结了在揭示古代与现存类群之间的系统进化关系、基因流以及哺乳动物种群对气候变化的分子响应方面的研究突破，并探讨了哺乳动物古基因组学领域的机遇和关键挑战。
