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Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are naturally distributed across the Arctic and subarctic regions. Consequently, these animals have evolved to face numerous challenges, including exposure to severe cold, limited food availability in winter, and extremely prolonged light or dark periods. Unlike all other cervid species, both male and female reindeer annually grow deciduous antlers. Furthermore, reindeer are the only fully domesticated species among the Cervidae. However, little is known about the underlying genetic causes of these traits.

We performed comparative genomic analyses between reindeer, other ruminant species, and a number of mammalian outgroups to identify rapidly evolving genes, positively selected genes, and reindeer-specific mutants. We further resequenced the genomes of three domestic reindeer from northern China and three wild reindeer from Northern …