Abstract:

【objective】 The aim of the study is to investigate the origin and evolution of Chinese domestic sheep (ovis aries) and the relationship between domestic sheep and multi-horned sheep, 【Method】 The complete cytb sequences of 42 individuals from 8 provinces were sequenced. 【Result】 The result showed that totally 40 haplotypes were detected, and Haplotype diversity (Hd) and nucleotide diversity (?) were 0.997±0.006 and 0.793%, respectively. The neighbour-joining tree indicated that there are four distinct lineages (A, B, C and D) in Chinese domestic sheep. It is firstly reported that lineage D were detected in Chinese sheep. And lineages B and C had the highest variance value, which diverged from each other about 595±150 million years. The multi-horned sheep belonged to lineages A, B and D, which had closer relationship with domestic sheep than wild sheep. 【Conclusion】 Analysis of phylogenesis shows that Chinese sheep have multiple maternal origins or ever experienced several times domestication possibly. There is no evidence that urial, argali and asian mouflon had molecular contribution to the maternal ancestor of Chinese sheep.

Key words: sheep, cytochrome b, origin