PSIV-14 Late-Breaking: Investigating the population structure and differentiation of reindeer populations with high-density SNP markers.

摘要

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L., 1758) represents one of the most economically and culturally important species of Russian Northeast area, providing a significant source of nutrition for the entire human population. The wild form consists of two populations: Yakut and Taimyr whereas the domestic form is presented by four breeds and the Nenets is the largest one. Single nucleotide polymorphisms have gained wide use for estimation genetic diversity in model species and are becoming the marker of choice for applications in non-model such as reindeer. Here, we conducted the whole genome analysis with the BovineHD BeadChip to study the genetic structure and differentiation of the Nenets breed (NEN, n = 33) and wild reindeer populations inhabiting territories of the Taimyr Peninsula (TMR, n=27) and Yakutia (YAK, n=20).For data processing we used PLINK 1.07, Admixture 1.3 software and R packages diversity with subsequent visualization in the R packages pophelper and ggplot2. After quality control, 9623 SNPs were taken for the further analyses. Most likely, due to active migration, wild form surpassed the domestic one by all parameters of genetic diversity. MDS and ADMIXTURE analysis clearly showed the differentiation of the domestic and wild forms from each other, while majority of wild deer were not distributed according to the population affiliation and formed several mixed groups. Despite the fact that the reindeer genome is not yet sequenced, the genomic screening using the HD SNP array, developed for cattle, is the most modern highly informative method for studying the reindeer genome. Our results allowed to assess the level of genetic diversity and showed the possibilities of differentiation among domestic and wild reindeer populations that might be used to create effective programs for breeding and for conservation of unique populations. This work was funded by the Russian Science Foundation no.16-16-10068.