Genetic Diversity of Creole Sheep Managed by Indigenous Communities of the Central Region of Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

In the indigenous communities of central Veracruz, herds of creole sheep have been established and managed through traditional practices of crossing, but their genetic characteristics have never been examined in order to evaluate their state of endogamy, and to help the management programs to protect this genetic resource. The objective of the present study was to characterize the genetic diversity of three populations of creole sheep managed by indigenous communities in the central region of Veracruz, Mexico. Indigenous family producers of creole sheep were located and blood samples taken from 90 individual sheep from the municipalities of Tehuipango, Astacinga and Tlaquilpa, Veracruz. In the laboratory, the genomic DNA was extracted and genetic diversity characterized using four microsatellites (ILSTS11, ILSTS5, SRCRSP9 and OarFCB128) amplified by PCR and visualized on polyacrylamide gels. The four microsatellites were highly informative (PIC = 85%) and presented values of 0.6 to 0.81 of heterozygosity, with an average number of 16 alleles. According to the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium model, three of the loci were not significant (p < 0.05), presumably this means that they do not deviate significantly from H–W predictions and there was slight genetic differentiation (FST = 0.025), along with a slight decrease in homozygotes (FIS = −0.021). According to the analysis of variance, 99% of the total variation was hosted at the individual level. It is concluded that the three creole sheep populations still present genetic diversity at the four loci and non-random pairings have occurred.

Genetic Characterization and Alternative Preservation Ways of Locally Adapted Sheep Breeds: Cases of Private and Public Sheep Sectors in Tunisia and Italy

“…Microsatellites are the most frequently used markers for genotyping local farm animal breeds between 2005 and 2020 [ 39 ]. Although they are gradually being replaced by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, the microsatellite markers are still used to investigate the genetic diversity of local sheep breeds [ 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ], since commercial SNPs’ high throughput have been designed based on commercial breeds and thus, these markers presented an ascertainment bias regarding the local breeds [ 44 ]. Furthermore, the major shortcomings of the microsatellite markers, which is the challenge of genotyping repeatability across laboratories for dataset combination between different breed origins [ 45 ], was avoided in our study because the genotyping of the whole data from the two countries was conducted in the same laboratory.…”

Microsatellite Analysis Revealed Potential DNA Markers for Gestation Length and Sub-Population Diversity in Kari Sheep

“…Only two markers (MAF214 and ILSTS5) showed significant association with GL, suggesting their role in modifying the genes controlling GL in sheep. Both markers have shown polymorphism in sheep in previous studies and marker MAF214 is a dinucleotide repeat which may be linked with a coding region in the sheep’s genome [ 33 , 34 ]. However, these markers showed only moderate correlation values.…”