1Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, Nagpur Veterinary College, Nagpur- 440 006, Maharashtra
Animal Biotechnology Section, ICAR - Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute, Avikanagar- 304 501, Rajasthan
*E-mail address: biotech.satish@gmail.com
Online published on 24 February, 2015.
Genetic diversity was analyzed among six Indian sheep breeds using mitochondrial DNA(mt-DNA) D-loop region. A total of 216 blood samples from Deccani, Nellore, Malpura, Chokla, Nali and Sonadi sheep (36 of each) were assayed for restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) with seven restriction enzymes. The estimated genetic distance among the breeds ranged from 0.0658 to 0.1321. Deccani and Malpura sheep have the highest genetic distance between them whereas Chokla and Nali breed has the lowest. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Deccani, Nellore and Sonadi breeds fall under one clade, whereas Chokla, Malpura and Nali breeds fall under a separate clade. The results indicated that these breeds might have diverged many generations ago and estimated to be from 219333 to 440333 years ago. These results suggest that the mt-DNAD-loop analysis can serve as a tool for understanding the genetic architecture and phylogenetic relationship of Indian sheep breeds.
Genetic diversity, mt-DNA, Phylogenetic relationship, RFLP-PCR, Sheep breeds
