Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2023
Original Citation
Kim K,
Kim D,
Hanotte O,
Lee C,
Kim H,
Jeong C.
Inference of Admixture Origins in Indigenous African Cattle. Mol Biol Evol. 2023;40(12).
Keywords
JGM, Animals, Cattle, Africa, India, Genetics, Population, Breeding
JAX Source
Mol Biol Evol. 2023;40(12).
ISSN
1537-1719
PMID
37995300
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad257
Grant
O.H. cattle research is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UK aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (grant agreement OPP1127286) under the auspices of the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), established jointly by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), and the International Livestock Research Institute. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation nor the UK Government. K.K. is supported by the Jackson Laboratory Postdoctoral Scholar Award funded by Jackson Laboratory. C.J. and D.K. were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (no. RS-2023-00212640 to C.J.). H.K. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (no. NRF-2021R1A2C2094111). Conflict of interest statement. C.L. is a scientific advisory board member of Nabsys and Genome Insight.
Abstract
Present-day African cattle retain a unique genetic profile composed of a mixture of the Bos taurus and Bos indicus populations introduced into the continent at different time periods. However, details of the admixture history and the exact origins of the source populations remain obscure. Here, we infer the source of admixture in the earliest domestic cattle in Africa, African taurine. We detect a significant contribution (up to ∼20%) from a basal taurine lineage, which might represent the now-extinct African aurochs. In addition, we show that the indicine ancestry of African cattle, although most closely related to so-far sampled North Indian indicine breeds, has a small amount of additional genetic affinity to Southeast Asian indicine breeds. Our findings support the hypothesis of aurochs introgression into African taurine and generate a novel hypothesis that the origin of indicine ancestry in Africa might be different indicine populations than the ones found in North India today.
Comments
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.