Elephantid Genomes Reveal the Molecular Bases of Woolly Mammoth Adaptations to the Arctic

Abstract

Woolly mammoths and living elephants are characterized by major phenotypic differences that have allowed them to live in very different environments. To identify the genetic changes that underlie the suite of woolly mammoth adaptations to extreme cold, we sequenced the nuclear genome from three Asian elephants and two woolly mammoths, and we identified and functionally annotated genetic changes unique to woolly mammoths. We found that genes with mammoth-specific amino acid changes are enriched in functions related to circadian biology, skin and hair development and physiology, lipid metabolism, adipose development and physiology, and temperature sensation. Finally, we resurrected and functionally tested the mammoth and ancestral elephant TRPV3 gene, which encodes a temperature-sensitive transient receptor potential (thermoTRP) channel involved in thermal sensation and hair growth, and we show that a single mammoth-specific amino acid substitution in an otherwise highly conserved region of the TRPV3 channel strongly affects its temperature sensitivity.

The Evolutionary Origin and Genetic Makeup of Domestic Horses

“…Numerous genes involved in glucose metabolism indicated that sugar-related antifreezing properties and the ability to regulate seasonal thermogenic requirements might also be essential to survive the Arctic cold. Interestingly, the biological significance of some of these candidates was corroborated in woolly mammoths (Lynch et al 2015), where parallel episodes of positive selection have been described at the BARX2 and PHIP genes, associated with hair development and insulin metabolism, respectively. Similarly, human groups from Siberia (Cardona et al 2014) also show adaptive footprints at the PRKG1 gene, which participates in shivering by regulating blood vessel constriction.…”

Comparative Transcriptomic Approaches Exploring Contamination Stress Tolerance in Salix sp. Reveal the Importance for a Metaorganismal de Novo Assembly Approach for Nonmodel Plants

“…There were stretches of high conservation in these sequences at the amino acid level between all species; third base codon degeneracy was often present but not great enough to prevent seed mapping of reads (using standard, default alignment criteria). The same forced mapping was then performed using DNA sequencing of an extinct organism (representing some of the oldest DNA available to us), the woolly mammoth (Lynch et al, 2015), where three of the five ubiquitous genes with regions of high conservation also mismapped. As the number of Salix genes hosting reads from each organism (mapped independently) was relatively small, such commonality is rather surprising.…”

Integration of Heterogeneous Computing Infrastructures for Genome Sequencing Data Analysis

“…Возможность использования ДНК из археологического и палеонтологического материала позволяет решать многочисленные задачи, связанные с эволюцией экосистем в различных климатических условиях, с происхождением и эволюцией многих патогенных микроорганизмов, например чумной палочки, возбудителей туберкулеза или бруцеллеза [12]. В данной работе использовались геномные чтения шерстистого мамонта (Mammuthus primigenius), опубликованные ранее [13].…”