The domestic dog is the best friend of man from the animal kingdom. There are more than 400 dog breeds all over the world, each with different temperament and morphology. For this reason, they are competent to play many different roles in our livelihood. Like drug control dogs, police dogs, hunter dogs, seeing eye dogs and pet dogs.
Although embodying so much diversity, all dogs are descendants of gray wolves. When, where and how the aggressive and fearful wild animal became our best companion, are all interesting questions intriguing the scientific community and the public at large.
On December 15, the scientific journal Cell Research published a new study about the natural history of dogs from an international team led by Professor Ya-Ping Zhang, who is an evolutionary geneticist from Kunming Institute of Zoology. Using a collection of whole genome sequences of 12 gray wolves and 46 dogs sampled from the old and new world, the researchers found that dogs from southern East Asia had the highest genetic diversity compared to dogs from other places around the world, and were the most basal group to gray wolves. So this area is the most likely place where human domesticated dogs. After pinpointing the birthplace of the domestic dogs and dating the divergence time between different canid populations, for the first time, they revealed the road map of the the domestic dog’s travel to the rest of the globe.
According to this study, dogs branched off from gray wolves some 33,000 years ago in southern East Asia. And after living there for thousands of years, a subgroup of dogs began to migrate to the Middle East about 15,000 years ago. From there, dogs spread to Europe and Africa. The researchers also found an out-of-southern East Asia lineage coming back to East Asia. In northern East Asia, about 10,000 years ago, the dogs of this lineage interbred with the endemic Asian dogs that had spread from southern East Asia. Based on their observation of some breeds with and others without admixture signals currently living in the New World, they concluded that there were multiple waves of migration to the New World from the far east.
This study, using one of the most abundant genome data so far, revealed an extraordinary journey that the domestic dog has traveled on earth. Because of the strong bond between dogs and human, we expect that this work will shed some light on the history of mankind. Immediately upon its publication, many mainstream media, including The Washington Post, Discovery Channel, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and Science and Technology Daily reported it. Not surprisingly, we are all anxious to know more history of our best friend, the dog.
Links:
Cell Research:
http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/cr2015147a.html
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/16/the-east-asian-origin-story-of-mans-best-friend/
Discovery Channel
http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/dna-dates-dog-domestication-back-33000-years-151215.htm
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-origin-of-dogs-20151214-story.html
The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/15/dog-dna-study-reveals-the-extraordinary-journey-of-mans-best-friend
科技日报
http://www.wokeji.com/jbsj/yb/201512/t20151218_2057169.shtml
