The Enigmatic Origin of Bovine Mtdna Haplogroup R: Sporadic Interbreeding Or an Independent Event of Bos Primigenius Domestication in Italy?
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PubMed Central The Enigmatic Origin of Bovine mtDNA Haplogroup R: Sporadic Interbreeding or an Independent Event of Bos primigenius Domestication in Italy? Silvia Bonfiglio1, Alessandro Achilli1,2, Anna Olivieri1, Riccardo Negrini3, Licia Colli3, Luigi Liotta4, Paolo Ajmone-Marsan3, Antonio Torroni1, Luca Ferretti1* 1 Dipartimento di Genetica e Microbiologia, Universita` di Pavia, Pavia, Italy, 2 Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e Ambientale, Universita` di Perugia, Perugia, Italy, 3 Istituto di Zootecnica, Universita` Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy, 4 Dipartimento di Morfologia, Biochimica, Fisiologia e Produzioni Animali, Universita` di Messina, Messina, Italy Abstract Background: When domestic taurine cattle diffused from the Fertile Crescent, local wild aurochsen (Bos primigenius) were still numerous. Moreover, aurochsen and introduced cattle often coexisted for millennia, thus providing potential conditions not only for spontaneous interbreeding, but also for pastoralists to create secondary domestication centers involving local aurochs populations. Recent mitochondrial genomes analyses revealed that not all modern taurine mtDNAs belong to the shallow macro-haplogroup T of Near Eastern origin, as demonstrated by the detection of three branches (P, Q and R) radiating prior to the T node in the bovine phylogeny. These uncommon haplogroups represent excellent tools to evaluate if sporadic interbreeding or even additional events of cattle domestication occurred. Methodology: The survey of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control-region variation of 1,747 bovine samples (1,128 new and 619 from previous studies) belonging to 37 European breeds allowed the identification of 16 novel non-T mtDNAs, which after complete genome sequencing were confirmed as members of haplogroups Q and R.
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