Genetic polymorphism among five species of Indus River carps on the basis of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis

Abstract

The knowledge of molecular genetics is a key to understand biodiversity, evolutionary relationship, conservation programs, and genetic structure of species of an ecosystem. To study genetic polymorphism in morphological variants of five species of Indus River carps, namely, Labeo gonius, Labeo rohita, Labeo calbasu, Catla catla, and Cirrhinus mrigala, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was used. Using eight primers, a total of 719 loci were amplified comprising of 389 polymorphic loci (53.7%) and 330 monomorphic loci (45.3%). The mean value of observed number of alleles (na), effective number of alleles (ne), Nei gene diversity (h), and Shannon’s information index were 2, 1.65, 0.38, and 0.56, respectively. The mean value of Nei total gene diversity (Ht), gene diversity within the population (Hs), relative magnitude of differentiation among population (Gst), and gene flow (Nm) were 0.38, 0.26, 0.28, and 3.98, respectively. The mean value of Hs and Gst suggests moderate gene flow between these fish populations. This study revealed that C. catla is more close to L. gonius, L. rohita, and L. calbasu than C. mrigala. We have presented the first detailed study of genetic variation within and among five fish species of Indus River carps in Pakistan.