Diet adaptation in dog reflects spread of prehistoric agriculture.

ABSTRACT: Adaptations allowing dogs to thrive on a diet rich in starch, including a significant AMY2B copy number gain, constituted a crucial step in the evolution of the dog from the wolf. It is however not clear whether this change was associated with the initial domestication, or represents a secondary shift related to the subsequent development of agriculture. Previous efforts to study this process were based on geographically limited data sets and low-resolution methods, and it is therefore not known to what extent the diet adaptations are universal among dogs and whether there are regional differences associated with alternative human subsistence strategies. Here we use droplet PCR to investigate worldwide AMY2B copy number diversity among indigenous as well as breed dogs and wolves to elucida

SUBMITTER: Arendt M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5061917 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature