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- Title
Domestication of the Dog from the Wolf Was Promoted by Enhanced Excitatory Synaptic Plasticity: A Hypothesis.
- Authors
Yan Li; Guo-Dong Wang; Ming-Shan Wang; Irwin, David M.; Dong-Dong Wu; Ya-Ping Zhang
- Abstract
Dogs shared a much closer relationship with humans than any other domesticated animals, probably due to their unique social cognitive capabilities, which were hypothesized to be a by-product of selection for tameness toward humans. Here, we demonstrate that genes involved in glutamatemetabolism, which account partially for fear response, indeed show the greatest population differentiation by whole-genome comparison of dogs and wolves. However, the changing direction of their expression supports a role in increasing excitatory synaptic plasticity in dogs rather than reducing fear response. Because synaptic plasticity are widely believed to be cellular correlates of learning andmemory, this change may alter the learning andmemory abilities of ancient scavenging wolves, weaken the fear reaction toward humans, and prompt the initial interspecific contact.
- Subjects
DOMESTICATION of dogs; NEUROPLASTICITY; SOCIAL cognitive theory; WOLVES; HUMAN-animal relationships; SINGLE nucleotide polymorphisms; MANN Whitney U Test; GENE ontology
- Publication
Genome Biology & Evolution, 2014, Vol 6, Issue 11, p3115
- ISSN
1759-6653
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/gbe/evu245