A legacy of genetic entanglement with wolves shapes modern dogs.

ABSTRACT: Dogs evolved through interactions between people and gray wolves during the Late Pleistocene and have been ubiquitous in human societies ever since. Instances of wolf-to-dog introgression are rare, but adaptive introgression has been shown in association with high-altitude survival. Any widespread gene flow, however, has fallen below thresholds of detection in genome-wide statistical assessments. To reexamine evidence of dog-wolf gene flow, we analyzed 2,693 published dog and wolf genomes and combined highly sensitive local ancestry inference and phylogenomic analyses of nuclear genes, mitochondrial genomes, and Y-chromosome sequences. Although dogs and wolves segregate decisively at the nuclear level, no individual nuclear gene tree supports dog monophyly. Uniparental markers show mixed a

SUBMITTER: Lin AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12684911 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature