Abstract :
Many studies have focused on modern goats, however, few reports focused on origin and
genetic structure of Chinese ancient goats. In this study,weanalyzed the 289-bp fragment of
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region from 14 Chinese ancient goats excavated from
two archaeological sites in Inner Mongolia, China dating back about 2500 years. 10 haplotypes
were successfully obtained from the 14 ancient goats. Phylogenetic analysis revealed
the multiple maternal origins of Chinese domestic goats, three mtDNA lineages A, B, and
D were identified in the Chinese ancient individuals, in which lineage A was predominant
(70%), lineages B was moderate (20%), and lineage D was present at low frequency (10%).
The network analysis showed that lineage B was subdivided into two subgroups B1 and B2.
One of the Chinese ancient goats shared the founder haplotype in the center of subgroup
B1, and the shared sequences of the founder haplotypes of subgroups B1 and B2 distributed
mainly in China. These results implied that lineage B including subgroups B1 and B2 probably
originated from China, and further supported the hypothesis that China may be one of
the goat domestication centers. In addition, the analysis of shared sequences indicated that
the ancient goats from Inner Mongolia were closely genetically related to Chinese modern
goats, suggesting that the ancient goats from Inner Mongolia had the genetic contribution
to Chinese modern goats.
