Genetic diversity and population structure of local and exotic sheep breeds in Jordan using microsatellites markers

Abstract

Aim:This study was conducted to study the genetic and population structure of local (Awassi) and exotic (Romanov, Charollais, Assaf, Awassi, and Suffolk) sheep breeds in Jordan using eight microsatellite markers.Materials and Methods:A total of 125 sheep were used (25 from each breed) in the study. The number of alleles (A), the mean values of observed (Ho) and expected (He) heterozygosity, polymorphism information content (PIC), fixation index as a measure of heterozygote deficiency or excess, and Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) were analyzed using PopGen and CERVUS softwares. Nei’s standard genetic distances among breeds and dendrogram of unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) were calculated and constructed using PopGen software.Results:A total of 40 alleles were detected with an average number of alleles of 5. The mean Ho value was higher than the mean He value for all breeds. Awassi breed showed the highest average PIC value while Romanov had the lowest. There was a significant (p<0.05) deviation from HWE at each locus within and between breeds. Deviations from HWE were found to be highly significant for all markers except OARFCP304 locus. The genetic distance estimates revealed a close relationship between Romanov and Charollais and between Awassi and Charollais. In the UPGMA dendrogram, Charollais, Romanov, and Awassi breeds were placed together in one main cluster while Assaf was in a different subcluster. Awassi was placed alone in a second main cluster.Conclusion:Results of this study offer insight toward the genetic conservation of the studied breeds and a base on which breeding plans can be made.

Microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA analyses unveil the genetic structure of native sheep breeds from three major agro-ecological regions of India

“…Estimates were also comparable with that of the Kajali sheep, that belong to the NWASA region 21 and four sheep populations of the SP region; Madras Red, Mecheri, and Pattanam 27 and Tiruchi Black 28 . The genetic variability observed in this study was higher than those reported in Jordan sheep 29 , and sheep breeds of the neighboring country, Pakistan 30 . However, it was comparable to the values reported across the world, for sheep 31,32 .…”

Genetic diversity of different breeds of Kazakh sheep using microsatellite analysis

“…Similarly, our analysis of the data showed that the greatest genetic diversity was detected in the Edilbay-1 sheep breed, with a mean value of alleles of 8.333 ± 0.644, and these indicators did not differ much among the remaining populations (Table 2). The allele diversity for Edilbay-1 was similar to that of Arabian sheep studied with 12 microsatellite loci (Ahmed et al, 2018) but much higher than that reported for Jordan sheep breeds (Khaleel et al, 2018). The lowest genetic diversity among the breeds studied was expressed in Kazakh Arkhar-Merino, with an average value of seven alleles.…”

Genetic variability analysis of 26 sheep breeds in the Czech Republic

“…Except for CA, GG, CH, OU, RO, and SF, the expected heterozygosity was lower than the observed ( Table 2). The level of heterozygosity within breeds was in agreement with previous studies in different sheep breeds (Peter et al, 2007;Jyotsana et al, 2010;Jawasreh et al, 2018;Bravo et al, 2019). In general, the results showed that the heterozygosity across and within breeds was sufficient concerning the potential loss of genetic diversity in the next generations.…”