GENETIC DIFFERENTIATION AND RELATIONSHIP AMONG EGYPTIAN NILE DELTA LOCATED BUFFALO USING MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

Abstract

SUMMARY The level of genetic differentiation, gene flow and relationship among six different populations of Egyptian buffalo located in the Nile Delta region were analyzed using nine microsatellite DNA markers. The nine microsatellites were BM1329; BMS483; BM143; AFR227; BMS2460; CSSM38; CSSM70; ETH02 and BM1706. The total number of animals sampled was 312, collected from six governorates; Behera, Menoufia, Kaliobia, Giza, Sharkia and Alexandria. The mean estimates of global F-statistics over all loci were 0.038±0.018 and 0.015±0.003 for FIT and FST, respectively, indicating a low level of inbreeding within and among populations. This also points towards low genetic differentiation between populations. All studied populations showed deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in all studied loci (P < 0.01). Depending on the genetic distances and identify, there was a great genetic relationship among the different populations. Values of gene flow or migration between populations were high, the mean migration rate (Nm) found across all studied populations was 11.94, meaning that migration and admixture could have taken place between these populations. Factorial Correspondence Analysis (FCA) revealed a low breed-specific clustering. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that 1.48% of the total genetic variation is among populations, while the remaining 98.5% corresponded to differences within populations (P<0.001). It was concluded that the classification of the Nile Delta buffalo populations into different breeds does not have strong genetic support at the microsatellite polymorphism level due to the high gene flow and the low genetic differentiation assessed between populations. The results indicate that the Nile Delta located buffalo could be considered one breed.