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Arctic introgression and chromatin regulation facilitated rapid Qinghai-Tibet Plateau colonization by an avian predator

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posted on 2022-11-17, 04:23 authored by L Hu, J Long, Y Lin, Z Gu, H Su, X Dong, Z Lin, Q Xiao, N Batbayar, B Bold, L Deutschová, S Ganusevich, V Sokolov, A Sokolov, HR Patel, PD Waters, Jennifer GravesJennifer Graves, A Dixon, S Pan, X Zhan
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), possesses a climate as cold as that of the Arctic, and also presents uniquely low oxygen concentrations and intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation. QTP animals have adapted to these extreme conditions, but whether they obtained genetic variations from the Arctic during cold adaptation, and how genomic mutations in non-coding regions regulate gene expression under hypoxia and intense UV environment, remain largely unknown. Here, we assemble a high-quality saker falcon genome and resequence populations across Eurasia. We identify female-biased hybridization with Arctic gyrfalcons in the last glacial maximum, that endowed eastern sakers with alleles conveying larger body size and changes in fat metabolism, predisposing their QTP cold adaptation. We discover that QTP hypoxia and UV adaptations mainly involve independent changes in non-coding genomic variants. Our study highlights key roles of gene flow from Arctic relatives during QTP hypothermia adaptation, and cis-regulatory elements during hypoxic response and UV protection.

History

Publication Date

2022-12-01

Journal

Nature Communications

Volume

13

Issue

1

Pagination

18p.

Publisher

Springer Nature

ISSN

2041-1723

Rights Statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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