Genetic polymorphism of keratin intermediate filament-1 gene in changthangi goats and its effect on fibre quality

Keratin intermediate filaments (KIF) are important members of keratin associated protein (KAP) gene families and structural protein components of cashmere fibre. Variation in KIF genes has been reported to affect the structure of KAPs and hence fibre characteristics. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism was utilized in 104 Changthangi goats to characterize and explore the different polymorphic variants of exon 1, partial 5 ’untranslated regions (UTR) and part of intron 1 of KIF-1 gene and its association with fibre quality. The chisquare distribution of the two different designated genotypes A₁ A₁ (0.592) and A₁ A₂ (0.408) of 459 bp fragment of KIF-1 gene were significantly (P<0.01) varying from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The effect of genotype on guard hair, fibre yield, down fibre length and diameter was nonsignificant; however the effect of sex of the animal on the cashmere yield and fine fibre length was significant (P<0.05). The mean genetic variability parameters were: heterozygosity value 0.3246, Shannon index I: 0.5057 and polymorphic information content value: 0.2720. The results suggest further investigation with sufficiently large number of samples along with the expression analysis of KIF-1 gene.