Abstract
BackgroundBos primigenius, the aurochs, is the wild ancestor of modern cattle breeds and was formerly widespread across Eurasia and northern Africa. After a progressive decline, the species became extinct in 1627. The origin of modern taurine breeds in Europe is debated. Archaeological and early genetic evidence point to a single Near Eastern origin and a subsequent spread during the diffusion of herding and farming. More recent genetic data are instead compatible with local domestication events or at least some level of local introgression from the aurochs. Here we present the analysis of the complete mitochondrial genome of a pre-Neolithic Italian aurochs.ResultsIn this study, we applied a combined strategy employing both multiplex PCR amplifications and 454 pyrosequencing technology to sequence the complete mitochondrial genome of an 11,450-year-old aurochs specimen from Central Italy. Phylogenetic analysis of the aurochs mtDNA genome supports the conclusions from previous studies of short mtDNA fragments - namely that Italian aurochsen were genetically very similar to modern cattle breeds, but highly divergent from the North-Central European aurochsen.ConclusionsComplete mitochondrial genome sequences are now available for several modern cattle and two pre-Neolithic mtDNA genomes from very different geographic areas. These data suggest that previously identified sub-groups within the widespread modern cattle mitochondrial T clade are polyphyletic, and they support the hypothesis that modern European breeds have multiple geographic origins.
Highlights
Bos primigenius, the aurochs, is the wild ancestor of modern cattle breeds and was formerly widespread across Eurasia and northern Africa
The complete Bos primigenius mtDNA genome generated from an 11 KY Italian skeleton as part of this study has a genetic distance of 0.45% from a 6,700-year-old sample recovered in England [30]
While the British genome belongs to the extremely rare P clade, the Italian genome belongs to the T clade, a pre-Neolithic homogeneous group of sequences which contains sequences from the vast majority of modern cattle
Summary
The aurochs, is the wild ancestor of modern cattle breeds and was formerly widespread across Eurasia and northern Africa. Standard ancient DNA methods that consist of amplification, followed by cloning and sequencing of multiple clones, have been used to obtain mitochondrial genomes from the bones of mammoths and other permafrost-embedded animals, where up to 400-500 base pair DNA fragments can be retrieved [1,2,3,4]. These methods are not as useful for less well-preserved samples [5] where the preference is for different approaches based on the development of metagenomic libraries or direct large-scale genome sequencing through Generation massively-parallel sequencing. While previous studies have utilised both modern and ancient DNA sequences, the ancient data consisted almost exclusively of short fragments of the mitochondrial control region. The present study reports the first pre-Neolithic aurochs mitochondrial genome typed from Southern Europe, and confirms the view that the aurochs was genetically structured in Europe, with different local populations having different genetic relationships with the modern cattle
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