Scientists at the joint laboratory of Novosibirsk State University and the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS and the Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS, together with American and Chinese colleagues, decoded the DNA of domesticated and wild foxes. This made it possible to identify the genes responsible for the animal’s good nature. The prestigious scientific journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution” published the results of these geneticists’ work.
This research is based on an experiment on the domestication of foxes that was started by Soviet geneticists Dmitry Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut in 1959. The experiment selected animals based on their degree of loyalty to human beings. The friendliest and most aggressive animals were put into separate groups and allowed to multiply. This created populations of domesticated and aggressive silver-black foxes whose behavioral characteristics were established at a genetic level.
For more than 15 years, studies of the domesticated fox genome have been conducted in Novosibirsk under the guidance of Anna Kukekova from the University of Illinois. Throughout this research, scientists have tried to identify changes in the genes that are responsible for the kind nature in foxes. They have now achieved this goal.
The geneticists divided the foxes into three groups, domesticated, aggressive and animals raised in the wild, and compared their genomes. The scientists identified 103 different genomic regions in the three groups of foxes. Changes in the character of genes in foxes that are friendly to humans were traced to mutations in one gene. This gene, SorCS1, is responsible for the ability of neurons to form new bonds.
Alexander Grafodatsky, Head of the Genome Diversity and Evolution Division at the Animal Cytogenetics Laboratory, talked about the research,
This work will continue. Last fall, a group of US scientists announced a new project to sequence vertebrate genomes. They are going to sequester the genomes of all 66,000 vertebrate species on a new generation of sequencers. This will provide much more accurate information about the relationship between gene position and the detailed assembly of genomes down to the chromosomes. Naturally, I will push for the genome of the "Belyaevsky" fox to be included in this new project.
Identification of genes related to aggression, sociability, and anxiety in foxes is of particular interest, since this behavior is a distinctive feature for a number of human behavioral disorders such as autism and other mental illnesses.
