Biology Faculty Articles

Authors

Aliya Yakupova, ITMO University
Andrey Tomarovsky, ITMO University; Novosibirsk State University; Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Azamat Totikov, ITMO University; Novosibirsk State University; Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Violetta R. Beklemisheva, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Maria Logacheva, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Polina Perelman, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Aleksey Komissarov, ITMO University
Pavel Dobrynin, ITMO University; Vavilov Institute of General Genetics RAS
Ksenia Krasheninnikova, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Gaik Tamazian, Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University
Natalya A. Serdyukova, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Michael Rayko, Saint Petersburg State University
Tatiana Bulyonkova, A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems SB RAS
Nikolay Cherkasov, Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University
Vladimir Pylev, Research Centre for Medical Genetics
Vladimir Peterfeld, Baikal Branch of State Research and Industrial Center of Fisheries
Aleksey Penin, Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Elena Balanovska, Research Centre for Medical Genetics
Alla L. Lapidus, St. Petersburg State University
DNA Zoo Consortium, Baylor College of Medicine
Stephen James O'Brien, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Alexander S. Graphodatsky, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS
Klaus-Peter Koepfli, George Mason University; Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
Sergey Kliver, University of Copenhagen

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-28-2023

Publication Title

Genes

Keywords

Pusa sibirica, conservation, pinnipeds, demography, heterozygosity

ISSN

2073-4425

Volume

14

Issue/No.

3

First Page

619

Abstract

Pusa sibirica, the Baikal seal, is the only extant, exclusively freshwater, pinniped species. The pending issue is, how and when they reached their current habitat—the rift lake Baikal, more than three thousand kilometers away from the Arctic Ocean. To explore the demographic history and genetic diversity of this species, we generated a de novo chromosome-length assembly, and compared it with three closely related marine pinniped species. Multiple whole genome alignment of the four species compared with their karyotypes showed high conservation of chromosomal features, except for three large inversions on chromosome VI. We found the mean heterozygosity of the studied Baikal seal individuals was relatively low (0.61 SNPs/kbp), but comparable to other analyzed pinniped samples. Demographic reconstruction of seals revealed differing trajectories, yet remarkable variations in Ne occurred during approximately the same time periods. The Baikal seal showed a significantly more severe decline relative to other species. This could be due to the difference in environmental conditions encountered by the earlier populations of Baikal seals, as ice sheets changed during glacial–interglacial cycles. We connect this period to the time of migration to Lake Baikal, which occurred ~3–0.3 Mya, after which the population stabilized, indicating balanced habitat conditions.

Comments

The work was supported by a research grant of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, 19-14-00034-P) and partly by a research grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project number 20-04-00808. A.L. and M.R. were supported by St. Petersburg State University (grant ID PURE: 73023672). N.C. and G.T. were supported by Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in the framework of Russian Federation’s Priority 2030 Strategic Academic Leadership Programme (Agreement 75-15-2021-1333). V.P. and E.B. were funded from the state assignment of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for Research Centre for Medical Genetics.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ORCID ID

0000-0001-7353-8301

ResearcherID

N-1726-2015

DOI

10.3390/genes14030619

Peer Reviewed

Included in

Biology Commons

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