Genetic Analysis of Chicken Lines by Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP)

Abstract

The amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) was applied to analyze genetic variation and relationships of eight chicken lines including Black Minorca (BM-C), White Leghorn (WL-GM) and Fayoumi (PNP, PNP/DO, PNN, GSN/1, GSN/2, and GSP) lines. Genomic DNA digested with EcoR I and Mse I was ligated to EcoR I and Mse I adapters and the fragments were amplified using four primer sets, each having three selective nucleotides at the 3' end. A fluorescent labeled Eco RI primer was used for the second amplification. A total of 188 distinctive bands were obtained with combinations of the four primer sets, of which 82 bands were polymorphic through the lines. The number of polymorphic bands between two lines were quite variable from 3 to 28. The average genetic variation expressed as band sharing (BS) values, ranged from 0.91 to 0.97 within chicken lines, while those values between breeds ranged from 0.37 to 0.51. A dendrogram constructed using the unweighted pair group method average (UPGMA) showed that these chicken lines could be classified into three breedependent groups and six Fayoumi lines were classified further into two sub-groups. The fingerprinting of DNA by AFLP offers a powerful and convenient tool not only for assessment of inbreeding, but also for revealing genetic relationships between chicken lines prior to the construction of a resource family for linkage analysis.