Latitude-driven adaptive evolution of body length in diverse pig breeds across China

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Background The geographical divergence of Chinese pigs led to various phenotypes through adaptive evolution. In particular, pigs from relatively low altitudes exhibit a positive correlation between body length and latitude. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. Identifying candidate genes associated with this body length variation is crucial for further understanding the genetic basis of adaptive traits in these Chinese pig breeds. Results We assembled a high-quality genome of the Neijiang pig as benchmark and analyse 297 Chinese domestic pigs and six Chinese wild boars distributed across different latitudes. Our study provides a comprehensive assessment of genetic diversity and population structure, revealing distinct genetic backgrounds of Chinese indigenous pigs from different regions. Most importantly, we observed a strong correlation between latitude and body length, and screened out the AFF4 gene through four calculation methods. Meanwhile, gene introgression and haplotype divergence of AFF4 among low-altitude pig breeds also proved that AFF4 may be one of the driver genes affecting the adaptive evolution of pig body length. Overexpression and knockdown experiments were performed in our study and confirmed the significantly impact of AFF4 on the osteogenic differentiation process. Conclusions These results enrich the pig genome poo

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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