The complete mitochondrial genome of an ancient cattle (Bos taurus) from Taosi site, China, and its phylogenetic assessment

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of one 4000-years-old cattle from Taosi site was determined by high throughput sequencing. The mitogenome was 16,336 bp in length and contained 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, and 22 tRNA genes. The protein-coding genes had two types of start codons (ATG and ATA) and three types of stop codons (TAA, TAG, and AGA). The overall base composition of the genome was 33%-A, 27%-T, 26%-C, 14%-G. The matrilineal genealogical analysis based on mitogenome revealed that the 4000-years-old cattle from Taosi site was domestic taurine cattle. In this study, we not only reported a complete mitogenome for a 4000-years-old bovine remain from the middle Yellow River region but also provided the mitogenomic evidence for the close phylogenetic relationship between the early taurine cattle in Northern China and modern domestic cattle.

Keywords:

• Ancient DNA
• cattle
• Yellow River region
• mitogenome
• phylogenetic analysis

Authors’ contributions

HX designed this project; XZ and LY performed the experiments; XZ analyzed the data; XZ, LY, XBZ and HX interpreted the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

Acknowledgments

We express sincere thanks to Prof. Jing Yuan (Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Science) for generously providing the ancient sample, and to Dr. Tianming Lan (BGI-Shenzhen) for great help with the experiment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The mitochondrial genome sequence data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) under the accession no. MW364778.1. The associated BioProject, SRA, and Bio-Sample numbers are PRJNA773626, SRR16530732, and SAMN22502716 respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Foundation for Distinguished Young Talents in Higher Education of Guangdong [2019KQNCX167], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31961133031], the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Molecular Design and Precise Breeding [2019B030301010], and the Scientific Research Startup Fund for High-level Talents of Foshan City [BKS209071].