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. 2022 Jun;53(3):452-459.
doi: 10.1111/age.13191. Epub 2022 Mar 14.

Broad maternal geographic origin of domestic sheep in Anatolia and the Zagros

Charlotte Her  1 , Hamid-Reza Rezaei  1   2 , Sandrine Hughes  3 , Saeid Naderi  1   4 , Marilyne Duffraisse  3 , Marjan Mashkour  5 , Hamid-Reza Naghash  1 , Adrian Bălășescu  6 , Gordon Luikart  7 , Steve Jordan  8 , Deniz Özüt  9 , Aykut Kence  9 , Michael W Bruford  10 , Anne Tresset  5 , Jean-Denis Vigne  5 , Pierre Taberlet  11 , Catherine Hänni  1 , François Pompanon  1
Affiliations

Broad maternal geographic origin of domestic sheep in Anatolia and the Zagros

Charlotte Her et al. Anim Genet. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

We investigated the controversial origin of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) using large samples of contemporary and ancient domestic individuals and their closest wild relatives: the Asiatic mouflon (Ovis gmelini), the urial (Ovis vignei) and the argali (Ovis ammon). A phylogeny based on mitochondrial DNA, including 213 new cytochrome-b sequences of wild Ovism confirmed that O. gmelini is the maternal ancestor of sheep and precluded mtDNA contributions from O. vignei (and O. gmelini × O. vignei hybrids) to domestic lineages. We also produced 54 new control region sequences showing shared haplogroups (A, B, C and E) between domestic sheep and wild O. gmelini which localized the domestication center in eastern Anatolia and central Zagros, excluding regions further east where exclusively wild haplogroups were found. This overlaps with the geographic distribution of O. gmelini gmelini, further suggesting that the maternal origin of domestic sheep derives from this subspecies. Additionally, we produced 57 new CR sequences of Neolithic sheep remains from a large area covering Anatolia to Europe, showing the early presence of at least three mitochondrial haplogroups (A, B and D) in Western colonization routes. This confirmed that sheep domestication was a large-scale process that captured diverse maternal lineages (haplogroups).

Keywords: ancient DNA; animal domestication; area of early domestication; maternal genetic origins; mitochondrial DNA; phylogeny; sheep ancestor; wild sheep.

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