Partial genomic survival of cave bears in living brown bears

Nature Ecology & Evolution
Axel BarlowMichael Hofreiter

Abstract

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.

Associated Datasets

Jul 12, 2018·Aurora Grandal-D'AngladeChristoph Theunert

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Citations

Jun 22, 2019·Evolutionary Anthropology·Rebecca R AckermannDietmar Zinner
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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
EU327344
MH605139

Methods Mentioned

BETA
Illumina sequencing
PCR
DNA assay
deamination

Software Mentioned

RAxML
ETE3
DFOIL
samtools
SeqPrep
MUSCLE
GenomeAnalysisToolKit
FastaAlternateReferenceMaker
GATK
blastx

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