title: Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs.
abstract: The origin of the domestic dog from wolves has been established, but the number of founding events, as well as where and when these occurred, is not known. To address these questions, we examined the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence variation among 654 domestic dogs representing all major dog populations worldwide. Although our data indicate several maternal origins from wolf, >95% of all sequences belonged to three phylogenetic groups universally represented at similar frequencies, suggesting a common origin from a single gene pool for all dog populations. A larger genetic variation in East Asia than in other regions and the pattern of phylogeographic variation suggest an East Asian origin for the domestic dog, approximately 15,000 years ago.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 10691 Stockholm, Sweden. savo@biotech.kth.se
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Savolainen
authors.forename: Ya-ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Joakim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lundeberg
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Leitner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D001106:Archaeology; D001208:Asia; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D004285:Dogs / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D005788:Gene Pool; D005796:Genes; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006239:Haplotypes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D013995:Time; D019596:Wolves / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial