A Genomics Perspective on Pig Domestication

Abstract

Land animal domestication has typically led to remarkable phenotypic diversity, stemming from a broad genetic background. The process of land animal domestication turns out to be a complex, long-term event with extensive gene-flow between wild and captive populations. Using pig as model, this chapter provides an in-depth overview of domesticationrelated events leading towards the genetic diversity in extant pig breeds. Five events in the evolutionary history and domestication of pigs can be recognized that are important for the genetic variation in modern pig genomes: (1) Speciation of Sus species in Island SouthEast Asia (ISEA); (2) Divergence between European and Asian lineages; (3) Independent domestication leading to separate domesticated clades in Europe and Asia; (4) Hybridization between domesticated pigs from Asia and Europe; and (5) Breed formation. Remarkably, the extensive mixture of genetic material leading towards the current European commercial pigs has resulted in domestic breeds that are genetically more diverse than their wild ancestors. Nowadays, commercial breeding and genomics go hand in hand. Genomics has not only proven useful to provide understanding about the domestication history of pigs but also about the molecular mechanisms underlying traits of interest. Moreover, genomic selection is an important tool integral to modern commercial breeding.

The puzzling mitochondrial phylogeography of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), the commercially most important insect protein species

“…The scientific utility for the genetic characterization and source documentation in commercial breeding of domestic livestock (e.g. pigs and cattle) is obvious, and genomics has not only proven useful for reconstructing the domestication history of the different breeds, but also for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying traits of interest [36]. A tremendous amount of phenotypic plasticity among three different BSF strains in the ability of their larvae to reduce dry matter and Table 1 Occurrences of partly shared haplotypes between rearing cultures and field-collected flies and resolved into three large sequence clusters (Fig.…”

Genome‐wide analysis suggests multiple domestication events of Chinese local pigs

“…Combining the previous studies (Bosse, 2018) and the scenario in European pigs (Frantz et al, 2019), we formed a hypothesis about the migration history of Chinese local pigs (Figure 7). That is, the ancestor population split with wild boars ~22 300 years ago ( T G , 50% highest posterior density (HPD) 18 838–22 758; Table and Figure 7).…”

The puzzling mitochondrial phylogeography of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), the commercially most important insect protein species

“…The scientific utility for the genetic characterization and source documentation in commercial breeding of domestic livestock (e.g. pigs and cattle) is obvious, and genomics has not only proven useful for reconstructing the domestication history of the different breeds, but also for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying traits of interest [36]. A tremendous amount of phenotypic plasticity among three different BSF strains in the ability of their larvae to reduce dry matter and associated nutrients in three different animal manures was demonstrated in a study by Zhou et al [37], and additional evidence is emerging more recently [38].…”