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Cited by 31Genetic diversity and population structureMarine animal studies overviewGenomics and Phylogenetic Studies

Steller’s sea cow genome suggests this species began going extinct before the arrival of Paleolithic humans

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Sharko, Fedor S., Boulygina, Eugenia S., Tsygankova, Svetlana V., Slobodova, Natalia V., Alekseev, Dmitry A., Krasivskaya, Anna A., Rastorguev, Sergey M., Tikhonov, Alexei N. +1 more·2021·Nature Communications
DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-22567-5PMC PMC8044168
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Abstract

Anthropogenic activity is the top factor directly related to the extinction of several animal species. The last Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) population on the Commander Islands (Russia) was wiped out in the second half of the 18 th century due to sailors and fur traders hunting it for the meat and fat. However, new data suggests that the extinction process of this species began much earlier. Here, we present a nuclear de novo assembled genome of H. gigas with a 25.4× depth coverage. Our results demonstrate that the heterozygosity of the last population of this animal is low and comparable to the last woolly mammoth population that inhabited Wrangel Island 4000 years ago. Besides, as a matter of consideration, our findings also demonstrate that the extinction of this marine mammal starts along the North Pacific coastal line much earlier than the first Paleolithic humans arrived in the Bering sea region.

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  • For an assembly of the extinct Steller's sea cow with a scaffold N50 value of 1.4 kb, TOGA improved the relative coding sequence length from 28% to 70%.

    “Even for an assembly of the extinct Steller’s sea cow with a scaffold N50 value of just 1.4 kb (30), TOGA improved the relative coding sequence length from 28% to 70%.”

    From Integrating gene annotation with orthology inference at scale (2023) · cites this paper as [30]

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Authors
Sharko, F. S., Boulygina, E. S., Tsygankova, S. V., Slobodova, N. V., Alekseev, D. A., Krasivskaya, A. A., Rastorguev, S. M., Tikhonov, A. N., & Nedoluzhko, A. V.
Affiliations
  • Kurchatov Institute (RU)
  • The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RU)
  • Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (RU)
  • North-Eastern Federal University (RU)
  • Nord University (NO)
Corresponding author
Nedoluzhko, Artem V.
ORCID
Venue
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2021-04-13
Volume
12
Issue
1
Pages
2215-2215
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41467-021-22567-5
PMC
PMC8044168
OpenAlex
W3155592356
Cited by
31
References
3
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 2
FWCI
2.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Nord universitet
  • Russian Foundation for Basic Research (18-00-00399, 075-15-2019-1659, 18-00-00398)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic diversity and population structure
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Marine animal studies overview
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
Keywords
Steller's sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, de novo genome assembly, extinction time, anthropogenic extinction, Bering Sea, woolly mammoth, Wrangel Island
MeSH terms
Animals, DNA, Mitochondrial, Humans, Mutation, Phylogeny, Russia, Genome, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Dugong, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Extinction, Biological

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