Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates the local origin of domestic pigs in the upstream region of the Yangtze River

PLoS One. 2012;7(12):e51649. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051649. Epub 2012 Dec 13.

Abstract

Previous studies have indicated two main domestic pig dispersal routes in East Asia: one is from the Mekong region, through the upstream region of the Yangtze River (URYZ) to the middle and upstream regions of the Yellow River, the other is from the middle and downstream regions of the Yangtze River to the downstream region of the Yellow River, and then to northeast China. The URYZ was regarded as a passageway of the former dispersal route; however, this assumption remains to be further investigated. We therefore analyzed the hypervariable segements of mitochondrial DNA from 513 individual pigs mainly from Sichuan and the Tibet highlands and 1,394 publicly available sequences from domestic pigs and wild boars across Asia. From the phylogenetic tree, most of the samples fell into a mixed group that was difficult to distinguish by breed or geography. The total network analysis showed that the URYZ pigs possessed a dominant position in haplogroup A and domestic pigs shared the same core haplotype with the local wild boars, suggesting that pigs in group A were most likely derived from the URYZ pool. In addition, a region-wise network analysis determined that URYZ contains 42 haplotypes of which 22 are unique indicating the high diversity in this region. In conclusion, our findings confirmed that pigs from the URYZ were domesticated in situ.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Breeding
  • China
  • DNA, Mitochondrial / genetics*
  • Genetic Variation
  • Geography
  • Haplotypes
  • Mitochondria / genetics
  • Models, Genetic
  • Models, Statistical
  • Phylogeny
  • Rivers
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA
  • Sus scrofa / genetics

Substances

  • DNA, Mitochondrial

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the Specialized Research Fund of Ministry of Agriculture of China (NYCYTX-009), the Project of Provincial Twelfth Five Years’ Animal Breeding of Sichuan Province (2011YZGG15), the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (2011DFB30340) and the National Special Foundation for Transgenic Species of China (2011ZX08006-003) to X.L., the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30901024) and the Postdoctoral Fellowship of Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences to M.L. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.