517. Olfaction: a critical force driving adaptive evolution in yaks

Olfaction is genetically one of the highly evolved senses driving evolution for adaptation in mammals. The present study intended to highlight genomic regions under putative selective sweeps responsible for high-altitude adaptation in the genome of Arunachali yak, the only registered yak breed of India (till date). The data of Arunachali yak animals obtained through Double digest restriction-site associated DNA (ddRAD) sequencing was processed and 99,919 SNPs were filtered for further analysis. Genetic diversity elucidated based on nucleotide diversity (π=0.041 in 200 bp windows) and effective population size (Ne=83) was found to be optimum. Further, 207 regions across the genome were found to be putatively selected through De-correlated Composite of Multiple Signals (DCMS) statistic. Gene ontology analysis highlighted olfactory sensory perception as significantly overrepresented biological process. These findings reiterate evolutionary role of olfaction in environmental adaptation in one of the most unique germplasm.