Precipitation variation on the Loess Plateau (LP) of China is not only important for rain-fed agriculture in this environmentally sensitive region, but also critical for the water and life securities over the whole Yellow River basin. Here we reconstruct high resolution precipitation variation on the western LP during the past 370 years by using two replicated, annually-laminated stalagmites. S...

Yak domestication represents an important episode in the early human occupation of the high-altitude Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The precise timing of domestication is debated and little is known about the underlying genetic changes that occurred during the process. Here we investigate genome variation of wild and domestic yaks. We detect signals of selection in 209 genes of domestic yaks, sev...

The archaeological mound of Sofalin south of the Alborz Mountains of Northern Iran (Eastern Rey plain) sheds considerablelight on at least four problems connected with the emergence of complex societies in this part of Iran. The first, it helpsfill a chronological gap in an important archaeological sequence by revealing a previously unidentified late fourth andthird millennium B.C. sequence of ...

Climatic tolerance, especially drought tolerance, is one of the major factors shaping the geographic distributions of plant species. Thus, the general decline in rainfall from the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains (HHM) to the inner Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) might account for the significant differences in species distributions and richness between the two regions. To test this hypothesis, we condu...

BACKGROUND Ability of athletes in speed or endurance contests somehow is determined by inherited muscle fiber types. One of the important genes involved in sport genetics is ACTN3 that is located on chromosome 11q13-q14 and encodes α-actinin-3, which belongs to highly conserved family of α-actinin proteins. Genetic analysis of α-actinin-3 gene has showed a polymorphism R577X (rs1815739), which ...