Taming the Past: Ancient DNA and the Study of Animal Domestication.
During the last decade, ancient DNA research has been revolutionized by the availability of increasingly powerful DNA sequencing and ancillary genomics technologies, giving rise to the new field of paleogenomics. In this review, we show how our understanding of the genetic basis of animal domestication and the origins and dispersal of livestock and companion animals during the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods is being rapidly transformed through new scientific knowledge generated with paleogenomic methods. These techniques have been particularly informative in revealing high-resolution patterns of artificial and natural selection and evidence for significant admixture between early domestic animal populations and their wild congeners.
Animal Genomics Laboratory, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland; email: david.machugh@ucd.ie.|UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland.
David E
DE
MacHugh
Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom; email: greger.larson@arch.ox.ac.uk.
Greger
G
Larson
Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; email: lorlando@snm.ku.dk.|Université de Toulouse, University Paul Sabatier, Laboratoire AMIS, CNRS UMR 5288, 31000 Toulouse, France.
Ludovic
L
Orlando
D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic; D000072441:DNA, Ancient; D000071278:Domestication; D058751:Livestock; D012641:Selection, Genetic
D000072441:DNA, Ancient
agriculture; ancient DNA; domestication; genetics; livestock; selection