TY - JOUR
T1 - Partial genomic survival of cave bears in living brown bears
AU - Barlow, Axel
AU - Cahill, James A.
AU - Hartmann, Stefanie
AU - Theunert, Christoph
AU - Xenikoudakis, Georgios
AU - Fortes, Gloria G.
AU - Paijmans, Johanna L.A.
AU - Rabeder, Gernot
AU - Frischauf, Christine
AU - Grandal-d’Anglade, Aurora
AU - García-Vázquez, Ana
AU - Murtskhvaladze, Marine
AU - Saarma, Urmas
AU - Anijalg, Peeter
AU - Skrbinšek, Tomaž
AU - Bertorelle, Giorgio
AU - Gasparian, Boris
AU - Bar-Oz, Guy
AU - Pinhasi, Ron
AU - Slatkin, Montgomery
AU - Dalén, Love
AU - Shapiro, Beth
AU - Hofreiter, Michael
N1 - Funding Information: This work was funded by European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant ‘gene flow’ 310763 to M.H. G.G.F. and R.P. were supported by ERC starting grant 263441 to R.P. A.G.-d’A. and A.G.-V. were supported by research project CGL2014-57209-P of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to A.G.-d’A. J.A.C. and B.S. were supported by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-3804) and NSF ARC-1417036 to B.S. U.S. was supported by grant IUT20-32 from the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, and P.A. by the Estonian Science Foundation DoRa programme. We thank the regional governments of Asturias and Castilla y León, in Spain, for providing tissue samples of Cantabrian bears. The authors would like to acknowledge support from Science for Life Laboratory, the National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI), Sweden, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and UPPMAX for providing assistance in massively parallel DNA sequencing and computational infrastructure. Publisher Copyright: © 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - Although many large mammal species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their DNA may persist due to past episodes of interspecies admixture. However, direct empirical evidence of the persistence of ancient alleles remains scarce. Here, we present multifold coverage genomic data from four Late Pleistocene cave bears (Ursus spelaeus complex) and show that cave bears hybridized with brown bears (Ursus arctos) during the Pleistocene. We develop an approach to assess both the directionality and relative timing of gene flow. We find that segments of cave bear DNA still persist in the genomes of living brown bears, with cave bears contributing 0.9 to 2.4% of the genomes of all brown bears investigated. Our results show that even though extinction is typically considered as absolute, following admixture, fragments of the gene pool of extinct species can survive for tens of thousands of years in the genomes of extant recipient species.
AB - Although many large mammal species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their DNA may persist due to past episodes of interspecies admixture. However, direct empirical evidence of the persistence of ancient alleles remains scarce. Here, we present multifold coverage genomic data from four Late Pleistocene cave bears (Ursus spelaeus complex) and show that cave bears hybridized with brown bears (Ursus arctos) during the Pleistocene. We develop an approach to assess both the directionality and relative timing of gene flow. We find that segments of cave bear DNA still persist in the genomes of living brown bears, with cave bears contributing 0.9 to 2.4% of the genomes of all brown bears investigated. Our results show that even though extinction is typically considered as absolute, following admixture, fragments of the gene pool of extinct species can survive for tens of thousands of years in the genomes of extant recipient species.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053061070&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41559-018-0654-8
DO - 10.1038/s41559-018-0654-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 30150744
SN - 2397-334X
VL - 2
SP - 1563
EP - 1570
JO - Nature Ecology and Evolution
JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution
IS - 10
ER -