Ancient genomes reveal insights into ritual life at Chichén Itzá.

The ancient city of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico, was one of the largest and most influential Maya settlements during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (AD 600-1000) and it remains one of the most intensively studied archaeological sites in Mesoamerica1-4. However, many questions about the social and cultural use of its ceremonial spaces, as well as its population's genetic ties to other Mesoamerican groups, remain unanswered2. Here we present genome-wide data obtained from 64 subadult individuals dating to around AD 500-900 that were found in a subterranean mass burial near the Sacred Cenote (sinkhole) in the ceremonial centre of Chichén Itzá. Genetic analyses showed that all analysed individuals were male and several individuals were closely related, including two pairs of monozygotic twins. Twins feature prominently in Mayan and broader Mesoamerican mythology, where they embody qualities of duality among deities and heroes5, but until now they had not been identified in ancient Mayan mortuary contexts. Genetic comparison to present-day people in the region shows genetic continuity with the ancient inhabitants of Chichén Itzá, except at certain genetic loci related to human immunity, including the human leukocyte antigen complex, suggesting signals of adaptation due to infectious diseases introduced to the region during the colonial period.

Widespread horse-based mobility arose around 2,200 BCE in Eurasia.

Horses revolutionized human history with fast mobility1. However, the timeline between their domestication and widespread integration as a means of transportation remains contentious2-4. Here we assemble a large collection of 475 ancient horse genomes to assess the period when these animals were first reshaped by human agency in Eurasia. We find that reproductive control of the modern domestic lineage emerged ~2,200 BCE (Before Common Era), through close kin mating and shortened generation times. Reproductive control emerged following a severe domestication bottleneck starting no earlier than ~2,700 BCE, and coincided with a sudden expansion across Eurasia that ultimately resulted in the replacement of nearly every local horse lineage. This expansion marked the rise of widespread horse-based mobility in human history, which refutes the commonly-held narrative of large horse herds accompanying the massive migration of steppe peoples across Europe ~3,000 BCE and earlier3,5. Finally, we detect significantly shortened generation times at Botai ~3,500 BCE, a settlement from Central Asia associated with corrals and a subsistence economy centered on horses6,7. This supports local horse husbandry before the rise of modern domestic bloodlines.

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes.

Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2-4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 BC, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association7 between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 BC8,9 driving the spread of Indo-European languages10. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium BC Sintashta culture11,12.

Struct-f4: a Rcpp package for ancestry profile and population structure inference from f4-statistics.

SUMMARY: Visualization and inference of population structure is increasingly important for fundamental and applied research. Here, we present Struct-f4, providing automated solutions to characterize and summarize the genetic ancestry profile of individuals, assess their genetic affinities, identify admixture sources and quantify admixture levels. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Struct-f4 is written in Rcpp and relies on f4-statistics and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) optimization. It is freely available under GNU General Public License in Bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org/plibradosanz/structf4/). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The avocado genome informs deep angiosperm phylogeny, highlights introgressive hybridization, and reveals pathogen-influenced gene space adaptation.

The avocado, Persea americana, is a fruit crop of immense importance to Mexican agriculture with an increasing demand worldwide. Avocado lies in the anciently diverged magnoliid clade of angiosperms, which has a controversial phylogenetic position relative to eudicots and monocots. We sequenced the nuclear genomes of the Mexican avocado race, P. americana var. drymifolia, and the most commercially popular hybrid cultivar, Hass, and anchored the latter to chromosomes using a genetic map. Resequencing of Guatemalan and West Indian varieties revealed that ∼39% of the Hass genome represents Guatemalan source regions introgressed into a Mexican race background. Some introgressed blocks are extremely large, consistent with the recent origin of the cultivar. The avocado lineage experienced 2 lineage-specific polyploidy events during its evolutionary history. Although gene-tree/species-tree phylogenomic results are inconclusive, syntenic ortholog distances to other species place avocado as sister to the enormous monocot and eudicot lineages combined. Duplicate genes descending from polyploidy augmented the transcription factor diversity of avocado, while tandem duplicates enhanced the secondary metabolism of the species. Phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, known to be elicited by Colletotrichum (anthracnose) pathogen infection in avocado, is one enriched function among tandems. Furthermore, transcriptome data show that tandem duplicates are significantly up- and down-regulated in response to anthracnose infection, whereas polyploid duplicates are not, supporting the general view that collections of tandem duplicates contribute evolutionarily recent "tuning knobs" in the genome adaptive landscapes of given species.

Understanding the Early Evolutionary Stages of a Tandem Drosophilamelanogaster-Specific Gene Family: A Structural and Functional Population Study.

Gene families underlie genetic innovation and phenotypic diversification. However, our understanding of the early genomic and functional evolution of tandemly arranged gene families remains incomplete as paralog sequence similarity hinders their accurate characterization. The Drosophila melanogaster-specific gene family Sdic is tandemly repeated and impacts sperm competition. We scrutinized Sdic in 20 geographically diverse populations using reference-quality genome assemblies, read-depth methodologies, and qPCR, finding that ∼90% of the individuals harbor 3-7 copies as well as evidence of population differentiation. In strains with reliable gene annotations, copy number variation (CNV) and differential transposable element insertions distinguish one structurally distinct version of the Sdic region per strain. All 31 annotated copies featured protein-coding potential and, based on the protein variant encoded, were categorized into 13 paratypes differing in their 3' ends, with 3-5 paratypes coexisting in any strain examined. Despite widespread gene conversion, the only copy present in all strains has functionally diverged at both coding and regulatory levels under positive selection. Contrary to artificial tandem duplications of the Sdic region that resulted in increased male expression, CNV in cosmopolitan strains did not correlate with expression levels, likely as a result of differential genome modifier composition. Duplicating the region did not enhance sperm competitiveness, suggesting a fitness cost at high expression levels or a plateau effect. Beyond facilitating a minimally optimal expression level, Sdic CNV acts as a catalyst of protein and regulatory diversity, showcasing a possible evolutionary path recently formed tandem multigene families can follow toward long-term consolidation in eukaryotic genomes.

The genome sequence of the grape phylloxera provides insights into the evolution, adaptation, and invasion routes of an iconic pest.

BACKGROUND: Although native to North America, the invasion of the aphid-like grape phylloxera Daktulosphaira vitifoliae across the globe altered the course of grape cultivation. For the past 150 years, viticulture relied on grafting-resistant North American Vitis species as rootstocks, thereby limiting genetic stocks tolerant to other stressors such as pathogens and climate change. Limited understanding of the insect genetics resulted in successive outbreaks across the globe when rootstocks failed. Here we report the 294-Mb genome of D. vitifoliae as a basic tool to understand host plant manipulation, nutritional endosymbiosis, and enhance global viticulture. RESULTS: Using a combination of genome, RNA, and population resequencing, we found grape phylloxera showed high duplication rates since its common ancestor with aphids, but similarity in most metabolic genes, despite lacking obligate nutritional symbioses and feeding from parenchyma. Similarly, no enrichment occurred in development genes in relation to viviparity. However, phylloxera evolved > 2700 unique genes that resemble putative effectors and are active during feeding. Population sequencing revealed the global invasion began from the upper Mississippi River in North America, spread to Europe and from there to the rest of the world. CONCLUSIONS: The grape phylloxera genome reveals genetic architecture relative to the evolution of nutritional endosymbiosis, viviparity, and herbivory. The extraordinary expansion in effector genes also suggests novel adaptations to plant feeding and how insects induce complex plant phenotypes, for instance galls. Finally, our understanding of the origin of this invasive species and its genome provide genetics resources to alleviate rootstock bottlenecks restricting the advancement of viticulture.

Correction to: The genome sequence of the grape phylloxera provides insights into the evolution, adaptation, and invasion routes of an iconic pest.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Detecting Signatures of Positive Selection along Defined Branches of a Population Tree Using LSD.

Identifying the genomic basis underlying local adaptation is paramount to evolutionary biology, and bears many applications in the fields of conservation biology, crop, and animal breeding, as well as personalized medicine. Although many approaches have been developed to detect signatures of positive selection within single populations and population pairs, the increasing wealth of high-throughput sequencing data requires improved methods capable of handling multiple, and ideally large number of, populations in a single analysis. In this study, we introduce LSD (levels of exclusively shared differences), a fast and flexible framework to perform genome-wide selection scans, along the internal and external branches of a given population tree. We use forward simulations to demonstrate that LSD can identify branches targeted by positive selection with remarkable sensitivity and specificity. We illustrate a range of potential applications by analyzing data from the 1000 Genomes Project and uncover a list of adaptive candidates accompanying the expansion of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and their spread to Europe.

DnaSP 6: DNA Sequence Polymorphism Analysis of Large Data Sets.

We present version 6 of the DNA Sequence Polymorphism (DnaSP) software, a new version of the popular tool for performing exhaustive population genetic analyses on multiple sequence alignments. This major upgrade incorporates novel functionalities to analyze large data sets, such as those generated by high-throughput sequencing technologies. Among other features, DnaSP 6 implements: 1) modules for reading and analyzing data from genomic partitioning methods, such as RADseq or hybrid enrichment approaches, 2) faster methods scalable for high-throughput sequencing data, and 3) summary statistics for the analysis of multi-locus population genetics data. Furthermore, DnaSP 6 includes novel modules to perform single- and multi-locus coalescent simulations under a wide range of demographic scenarios. The DnaSP 6 program, with extensive documentation, is freely available at http://www.ub.edu/dnasp.

Rapid Functional and Sequence Differentiation of a Tandemly Repeated Species-Specific Multigene Family in Drosophila.

Gene clusters of recently duplicated genes are hotbeds for evolutionary change. However, our understanding of how mutational mechanisms and evolutionary forces shape the structural and functional evolution of these clusters is hindered by the high sequence identity among the copies, which typically results in their inaccurate representation in genome assemblies. The presumed testis-specific, chimeric gene Sdic originated, and tandemly expanded in Drosophila melanogaster, contributing to increased male-male competition. Using various types of massively parallel sequencing data, we studied the organization, sequence evolution, and functional attributes of the different Sdic copies. By leveraging long-read sequencing data, we uncovered both copy number and order differences from the currently accepted annotation for the Sdic region. Despite evidence for pervasive gene conversion affecting the Sdic copies, we also detected signatures of two episodes of diversifying selection, which have contributed to the evolution of a variety of C-termini and miRNA binding site compositions. Expression analyses involving RNA-seq datasets from 59 different biological conditions revealed distinctive expression breadths among the copies, with three copies being transcribed in females, opening the possibility to a sexually antagonistic effect. Phenotypic assays using Sdic knock-out strains indicated that should this antagonistic effect exist, it does not compromise female fertility. Our results strongly suggest that the genome consolidation of the Sdic gene cluster is more the result of a quick exploration of different paths of molecular tinkering by different copies than a mere dosage increase, which could be a recurrent evolutionary outcome in the presence of persistent sexual selection.

Evolutionary Patterns and Processes: Lessons from Ancient DNA.

Ever since its emergence in 1984, the field of ancient DNA has struggled to overcome the challenges related to the decay of DNA molecules in the fossil record. With the recent development of high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies and molecular techniques tailored to ultra-damaged templates, it has now come of age, merging together approaches in phylogenomics, population genomics, epigenomics, and metagenomics. Leveraging on complete temporal sample series, ancient DNA provides direct access to the most important dimension in evolution­time, allowing a wealth of fundamental evolutionary processes to be addressed at unprecedented resolution. This review taps into the most recent findings in ancient DNA research to present analyses of ancient genomic and metagenomic data.

The Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel.

A major challenge of biology is understanding the relationship between molecular genetic variation and variation in quantitative traits, including fitness. This relationship determines our ability to predict phenotypes from genotypes and to understand how evolutionary forces shape variation within and between species. Previous efforts to dissect the genotype-phenotype map were based on incomplete genotypic information. Here, we describe the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP), a community resource for analysis of population genomics and quantitative traits. The DGRP consists of fully sequenced inbred lines derived from a natural population. Population genomic analyses reveal reduced polymorphism in centromeric autosomal regions and the X chromosome, evidence for positive and negative selection, and rapid evolution of the X chromosome. Many variants in novel genes, most at low frequency, are associated with quantitative traits and explain a large fraction of the phenotypic variance. The DGRP facilitates genotype-phenotype mapping using the power of Drosophila genetics.

Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments.

Yakutia, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian Far East, represents one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter record temperatures dropping below -70 °C. Nevertheless, Yakutian horses survive all year round in the open air due to striking phenotypic adaptations, including compact body conformations, extremely hairy winter coats, and acute seasonal differences in metabolic activities. The evolutionary origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis of their adaptations remain, however, contentious. Here, we present the complete genomes of nine present-day Yakutian horses and two ancient specimens dating from the early 19th century and ∼5,200 y ago. By comparing these genomes with the genomes of two Late Pleistocene, 27 domesticated, and three wild Przewalski's horses, we find that contemporary Yakutian horses do not descend from the native horses that populated the region until the mid-Holocene, but were most likely introduced following the migration of the Yakut people a few centuries ago. Thus, they represent one of the fastest cases of adaptation to the extreme temperatures of the Arctic. We find cis-regulatory mutations to have contributed more than nonsynonymous changes to their adaptation, likely due to the comparatively limited standing variation within gene bodies at the time the population was founded. Genes involved in hair development, body size, and metabolic and hormone signaling pathways represent an essential part of the Yakutian horse adaptive genetic toolkit. Finally, we find evidence for convergent evolution with native human populations and woolly mammoths, suggesting that only a few evolutionary strategies are compatible with survival in extremely cold environments.

High Gene Family Turnover Rates and Gene Space Adaptation in the Compact Genome of the Carnivorous Plant Utricularia gibba.

Utricularia gibba is an aquatic carnivorous plant with highly specialized morphology, featuring fibrous floating networks of branches and leaf-like organs, no recognizable roots, and bladder traps that capture and digest prey. We recently described the compressed genome of U. gibba as sufficient to control the development and reproduction of a complex organism. We hypothesized intense deletion pressure as a mechanism whereby most noncoding DNA was deleted, despite evidence for three independent whole-genome duplications (WGDs). Here, we explore the impact of intense genome fractionation in the evolutionary dynamics of U. gibba's functional gene space. We analyze U. gibba gene family turnover by modeling gene gain/death rates under a maximum-likelihood statistical framework. In accord with our deletion pressure hypothesis, we show that the U. gibba gene death rate is significantly higher than those of four other eudicot species. Interestingly, the gene gain rate is also significantly higher, likely reflecting the occurrence of multiple WGDs and possibly also small-scale genome duplications. Gene ontology enrichment analyses of U. gibba-specific two-gene orthogroups, multigene orthogroups, and singletons highlight functions that may represent adaptations in an aquatic carnivorous plant. We further discuss two homeodomain transcription factor gene families (WOX and HDG/HDZIP-IV) showing conspicuous differential expansions and contractions in U. gibba. Our results 1) reconcile the compactness of the U. gibba genome with its accommodation of a typical number of genes for a plant genome, and 2) highlight the role of high gene family turnover in the evolutionary diversification of U. gibba's functional gene space and adaptations to its unique lifestyle and highly specialized body plan.

Streptococcus gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus from human and animal origins: genetic diversity, antimicrobial susceptibility, and characterization of a vancomycin-resistant calf isolate carrying a vanA-Tn1546-like element.

The aim of this work was to characterize the antibiotic susceptibility and genetic diversity of 41 Streptococcus gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus isolates: 18 isolates obtained from animals and 23 human clinical isolates. Antibiotic susceptibility was determined by the semiautomatic Wider system and genetic diversity by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) with SmaI. Animal isolates grouped separately in the PFGE analysis, but no statistical differences in antimicrobial resistance were found between the two groups. The LMG 17956 sequence type 28 (ST28) strain recovered from the feces of a calf exhibited high levels of resistance to vancomycin and teicoplanin (MIC, ≥256 mg/liter). Its glycopeptide resistance mechanism was characterized by Southern blot hybridization and a primer-walking strategy, and finally its genome, determined by whole-genome sequencing, was compared with four closely related S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus genomes. Hybridization experiments demonstrated that a Tn1546-like element was integrated into the bacterial chromosome. In agreement with this finding, whole-genome sequencing confirmed a partial deletion of the vanY-vanZ region and partial duplication of the vanH gene. The comparative genomic analyses revealed that the LMG 17956 ST28 strain had acquired an unusually high number of transposable elements and had experienced extensive chromosomal rearrangements, as well as gene gain and loss events. In conclusion, S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus isolates from animals seem to belong to lineages separate from those infecting humans. In addition, we report a glycopeptide-resistant isolate from a calf carrying a Tn1546-like element integrated into its chromosome.

Functional evidence that a recently evolved Drosophila sperm-specific gene boosts sperm competition.

In many species, both morphological and molecular traits related to sex and reproduction evolve faster in males than in females. Ultimately, rapid male evolution relies on the acquisition of genetic variation associated with differential reproductive success. Many newly evolved genes are associated with novel functions that might enhance male fitness. However, functional evidence of the adaptive role of recently originated genes in males is still lacking. The Sperm dynein intermediate chain multigene family, which encodes a Sperm dynein intermediate chain presumably involved in sperm motility, originated from complex genetic rearrangements in the lineage that leads to Drosophila melanogaster within the last 5.4 million years since its split from Drosophila simulans. We deleted all the members of this multigene family resident on the X chromosome of D. melanogaster by chromosome engineering and found that, although the deletion does not result in a reduction of progeny number, it impairs the competence of the sperm in the presence of sperm from wild-type males. Therefore, the Sperm dynein intermediate chain multigene family contributes to the differential reproductive success among males and illustrates precisely how quickly a new gene function can be incorporated into the genetic network of a species.

PopDrowser: the Population Drosophila Browser.

MOTIVATION: The completion of 168 genome sequences from a single population of Drosophila melanogaster provides a global view of genomic variation and an understanding of the evolutionary forces shaping the patterns of DNA polymorphism and divergence along the genome. RESULTS: We present the 'Population Drosophila Browser' (PopDrowser), a new genome browser specially designed for the automatic analysis and representation of genetic variation across the D. melanogaster genome sequence. PopDrowser allows estimating and visualizing the values of a number of DNA polymorphism and divergence summary statistics, linkage disequilibrium parameters and several neutrality tests. PopDrowser also allows performing custom analyses on-the-fly using user-selected parameters. AVAILABILITY: PopDrowser is freely available from http://PopDrowser.uab.cat.

Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies.

The horse is central to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. However, when and how horses were first integrated into Indigenous lifeways remain contentious, with extant models derived largely from colonial records. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of an assemblage of historic archaeological horse remains, integrating genomic, isotopic, radiocarbon, and paleopathological evidence. Archaeological and modern North American horses show strong Iberian genetic affinities, with later influx from British sources, but no Viking proximity. Horses rapidly spread from the south into the northern Rockies and central plains by the first half of the 17th century CE, likely through Indigenous exchange networks. They were deeply integrated into Indigenous societies before the arrival of 18th-century European observers, as reflected in herd management, ceremonial practices, and culture.

Limited historical admixture between European wildcats and domestic cats.

Domestic cats were derived from the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis lybica), after which they dispersed with people into Europe. As they did so, it is possible that they interbred with the indigenous population of European wildcats (Felis silvestris). Gene flow between incoming domestic animals and closely related indigenous wild species has been previously demonstrated in other taxa, including pigs, sheep, goats, bees, chickens, and cattle. In the case of cats, a lack of nuclear, genome-wide data, particularly from Near Eastern wildcats, has made it difficult to either detect or quantify this possibility. To address these issues, we generated 75 ancient mitochondrial genomes, 14 ancient nuclear genomes, and 31 modern nuclear genomes from European and Near Eastern wildcats. Our results demonstrate that despite cohabitating for at least 2,000 years on the European mainland and in Britain, most modern domestic cats possessed less than 10% of their ancestry from European wildcats, and ancient European wildcats possessed little to no ancestry from domestic cats. The antiquity and strength of this reproductive isolation between introduced domestic cats and local wildcats was likely the result of behavioral and ecological differences. Intriguingly, this long-lasting reproductive isolation is currently being eroded in parts of the species' distribution as a result of anthropogenic activities.