Abstract:

Animal domestication is the process of changing wild animals into domesticated animals that can be kept stably for a long period of time. As the content of the Neolithic agricultural revolution, domestication is one of the important milestones of the progress of human civilization. Due to the close relationship between humans and animals, domestication has not only changed the wild state of animals, but also changed the habits and historical processes of human beings. The key question on animal domestication research include who is the ancestors of the domesticated animals were, the changes produced by domestication, and the time and place of domestication. Due to the advances in high-throughput genomic technologies and correspondence analysis methods, animal domestication is generally studied at the population level. Here we discuss the research content of animal domestication under population genetics, including population history, selection signals, as well as gene introgression, and we highlight two new expand contents, namely, dating the initial time of gene selection and the time of gene introgression. Finally, we summarize the recent research progress of major domesticated including pig, chicken, sheep and goat. These advances provide a new insights and perspective for the research on the animal domestication.

Key words: domestication, domesticated animals, population genetics, initial time of gene selection, time of gene introgression