Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a rich history underlying dog domestication

By Bridgett M. vonHoldt, J. Pollinger, K. Lohmueller, E. Han, H. Parker, P. Quignon, Jeremiah D. Degenhardt, A. Boyko, Dent Earl, A. Auton and 26 more. Nature, 2010

759 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Advances in genome technology have facilitated a new understanding of the historical and genetic processes crucial to rapid phenotypic evolution under domestication. To understand the process of dog diversification better, we conducted an extensive genome-wide survey of more than 48,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in dogs and their wild progenitor, the grey wolf. Here we show that dog breeds share a higher proportion of multi-locus haplotypes unique to grey wolves from the Middle East, indicating that they are a dominant source of genetic diversity for dogs rather than wolves from east Asia, as suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Furthermore, we find a surprising correspondence between genetic and phenotypic/functional breed groupings but there are exceptions that suggest phenotypic diversification depended in part on the repeated crossing of individuals with novel phenotypes. Our results show that Middle Eastern wolves were a critical source of genome diversity, although interbreeding with local wolf populations clearly occurred elsewhere in the early history of specific lineages. More recently, the evolution of modern dog breeds seems to have been an iterative process that drew on a limited genetic toolkit to create remarkable phenotypic diversity.

Subfields: Ecology, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0b89ada81bb23dccf2703b2be77641eb413929c

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Citations in the corpus

Genetics and conservation of wolves Canis lupus in Europe (2011, methodology): “Molecular data suggest multiple domestication events in Asia (Vilà et al. 1999a, Savolainen et al. 2002, Pang et al. 2009, vonHoldt et al. 2010).”
Inference of Population Splits and Mixtures from Genome-Wide Allele Frequency Data (2012, result): “This is consistent with the known strong bottlenecks in the establishment of dog breeds [23].”
The self-domestication hypothesis: evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression (2012, background): “…fox and dog chromosome VVU12 that are associated with the degree that animals wag their tails, approach humans and allow humans to touch them (Kukekova et al. 2006, 2011; vonHoldt et al. 2010), suggesting genetic convergence between the experimental fox population and domesticated dogs.”
9 Pathways to Animal Domestication (2012, background): “Recent genetic data support archaeological evidence that suggests initial dog domestication took place in the Near East (vonHoldt et al. 2009).”
Seven considerations about dingoes as biodiversity engineers: the socioecological niches of dogs in Australia (2012, background): “All dogs were derived by human selection and domestication from grey wolves, and, according to recent DNA evidence (vonHoldt et al. 2010), initially from Middle Eastern wolves and from later interbreeding with local wolf populations.”
The Wayward Dog: Is the Australian native dog or Dingo a distinct species? (2017, background): “…based on broad genomic sampling have generated a robust framework for interpreting the evolutionary origin and dispersal history of dog populations through southeast Asia and into Melanesia and Australia (vonHoldt et al. 2010, 2011; Oskarsson et al. 2012; Sacks et al. 2013; Skoglund et al. 2015).”
Trainability and boldness traits differ between dog breed clusters based on conventional breed categories and genetic relatedness (2011, positive): “Due to modern breeding rules and strict breed standards, dog breeds have become morphologically homogeneous, genetically isolated breeding units (vonHoldt et al., 2010).”
The “Domestication Syndrome” in Mammals: A Unified Explanation Based on Neural Crest Cell Behavior and Genetics (2014, positive): “Recent progress in mapping the genes involved in domestication in the rat, fox, and dog lay the groundwork by providing a short list of candidate genes and as yet uncharacterized loci for testing our hypothesis (Albert et al. 2009; Kukekova et al. 2010; Vonholdt et al. 2010).”