Local sheep varieties in Kazakhstan remain currently out of scope of global sheep diversity studies despite their long history and proximity to historical centers of sheep domestication. In the present study we applied medium-scale SNP genotyping to five local sheep breeds for the first time in Kazakhstan in order to investigate their population structure and relation to global sheep diversity.

Principal component analysis and model-based structure analysis of general population markers revealed two breed groups. The first group included Akzhayik and Kazak Fine-wool sheep and the second group had Edilbay, Saryarka and Kazakh Semi-coarse wool sheep. High heterogeneity of different populations of Akzhayik and Kazakh Semi-coarse wool sheep was observed. A neighbor-joining tree comparing Kazakh sheep data with the dataset generated by the Sheep HapMap project supported a close relationship between Kazakh sheep varieties and ancient domestic sheep ancestors.

尽管哈萨克斯坦的本地绵羊品种历史悠久且靠近绵羊驯养的历史中心，但目前仍不在全球绵羊多样性研究的范围之内。在本研究中，我们首次在哈萨克斯坦对五个本地绵羊品种应用了中等规模的SNP基因分型，以调查其种群结构及其与全球绵羊多样性的关系。

主种群标记的主成分分析和基于模型的结构分析揭示了两个品种组。第一组包括Akzhayik和Kazak细毛羊，第二组包括Edilbay，Saryarka和Kazakh半粗毛羊。观察到Akzhayik和哈萨克半粗羊毛绵羊不同种群的高度异质性。将哈萨克族绵羊数据与Sheep HapMap项目生成的数据集进行比较的一棵相邻树支持哈萨克族绵羊品种与古代家养绵羊祖先之间的密切关系。