1 School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China; 2 School of Animal Science and Technology/Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Molecular Design and Precise Breeding, Foshan University, Foshan 528225, China; 3 College of Animal Science and Technology/State Key Laboratory of Animal Biotech Breeding, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Abstract：As one of the most important domestic animals, the origin and spread pattern of taurine cattle (Bos taurus) in China has received widespread attention. In this study, 9 cattle remains from 3 archaeological sites in the middle reaches of the Yellow River were collected for extraction of ancient DNA for PCR sequencing and phylogenetic analysis to explore the origin and spread of taurine cattle in China. Through multiple rounds of PCR experiments, 527 bp endogenous mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained from 4 cattle remains from Taosi site (4300~4100 before the present). The results of haplotype classification clearly showed that all samples from the Taosi site were divided into 4 haplotypes, all of which belonged to domesticated taurine cattle T3 and T4 haplogroups which supported that Taosi domestic cattle originated from the Near East and were already utilized by people living in North China 4 100 years ago. Additionally, the abundant number of haplotypes at the Taosi site suggested that the ancient cattle population at the Taosi site had high maternal genetic diversity. Population pairwise FST distance analysis and the Median-Joining network analysis indicated that the ancient cattle had a close genetic relationship with the modern East Asian taurine cattle (FST=0.0164) and Chinese taurine cattle (FST=0.0066), suggesting that the ancient cattle population at Taosi site might be one of the maternal origin for the modern East Asian and Chinese taurine cattle. This study provides more molecular genetic evidence for resolving the origin and spread of cattle in China.
张兴, 杨柳, 侯凌云, 凌飞, 向海, 赵兴波. 利用mtDNA信息分析陶寺古牛的起源驯化[J]. 农业生物技术学报, 2025, 33(1): 92-103.
ZHANG Xing, YANG Liu, HOU Ling-Yun, LING Fei, XIANG Hai, ZHAO Xing-Bo. Analysis of the Origin and Domestication of Ancient Cattle (Bos taurus) at the Taosi Site Using mtDNA Information. 农业生物技术学报, 2025, 33(1): 92-103.
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