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Yakutia, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian Far East, represents one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter record temperatures dropping below -70 °C. Nevertheless, Yakutian horses survive all year round in the open air due to striking phenotypic adaptations, including compact body conformations, extremely hairy winter coats, and acute seasonal differences in metabolic activities. The evolutionary origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis of their adaptations remain, however, contentious. Here, we present the complete genomes of nine present-day Yakutian horses and two ancient specimens dating from the early 19th century and ∼5,200 y ago. By comparing these genomes with the genomes of two Late Pleistocene, 27 domesticated, and three wild Przewalski's horses, we find that contemporary Yakutian horses do not descend from the native horses that populated the region until the mid-Holocene, but were most likely introduced following the migration of the Yakut people a few centuries ago. Thus, they represent one of the fastest cases of adaptation to the extreme temperatures of the Arctic. We find cis-regulatory mutations to have contributed more than nonsynonymous changes to their adaptation, likely due to the comparatively limited standing variation within gene bodies at the time the population was founded. Genes involved in hair development, body size, and metabolic and hormone signaling pathways represent an essential part of the Yakutian horse adaptive genetic toolkit. Finally, we find evidence for convergent evolution with native human populations and woolly mammoths, suggesting that only a few evolutionary strategies are compatible with survival in extremely cold environments.

Bovine respiratory infections occupy the second place in the nosological picture after diseases of the digestive system and cause huge economic damage, which in the Russian Federation, according to our estimates, amounts to several billion rubles a year. Very often, respiratory pathologies in highly productive cows are complicated by wound infections of the distal extremities, which primarily include necrobacteriosis, streptococcosis and staphylococcosis, which also bring economic losses to farms due to reduced animal productivity and culling of highly productive cows.The primary causecontributing to the development of wound infections of the distal extremities in cattle is respiratory infections. According to our long-term observations, all farms where outbreaks of necrobacteriosis were recorded were unfavorable for bovine respiratory infections, such as infectious rhinotracheitis (IRT), viral diarrhea(VD), parainfluenza type 3 (PG-3) and respiratory syncytial infection (RSI). Comprehensive prevention of wound infectionsof the dental extremities of cattle (cattle) should include mandatory prevention of respiratory infections. For complex prevention of mixed infection, we proposed the use of an ECHO (electrochemically activated) solution of neutral anolyte (ANK+) in the form of a fine aerosol in combination with the use of a plant-tissue preparation “Vidoral”, (Patent RU 2,625,022 C2 dated 11.07.2017, copyright holder of the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Higher Education of the UralState Agrarian University ) with immunomodulatory properties.

Research of ancient pathogens in ancient human skeletons has been mainly carried out on the basis of one essential historical or archaeological observation, permitting specific pathogens to be targeted. Detection of ancient human pathogens without such evidence is more difficult, since the quantity and quality of ancient DNA, as well as the environmental bacteria potentially present in the sample, limit the analyses possible. Using human lung tissue and/or teeth samples from burials in eastern Siberia, dating from the end of 17(th) to the 19(th) century, we propose a methodology that includes the: 1) amplification of all 16S rDNA gene sequences present in each sample; 2) identification of all bacterial DNA sequences with a degree of identity ≥ 95%, according to quality criteria; 3) identification and confirmation of bacterial pathogens by the amplification of the rpoB gene; and 4) establishment of authenticity criteria for ancient DNA. This study demonstrates that from teeth samples originating from ancient human subjects, we can realise: 1) the correct identification of bacterial molecular sequence signatures by quality criteria; 2) the separation of environmental and pathogenic bacterial 16S rDNA sequences; 3) the distribution of bacterial species for each subject and for each burial; and 4) the characterisation of bacteria specific to the permafrost. Moreover, we identified three pathogens in different teeth samples by 16S rDNA sequence amplification: Bordetella sp., Streptococcus pneumoniae and Shigella dysenteriae. We tested for the presence of these pathogens by amplifying the rpoB gene. For the first time, we confirmed sequences from Bordetella pertussis in the lungs of an ancient male Siberian subject, whose grave dated from the end of the 17(th) century to the early 18(th) century.