Abstract
The Bakerwal breed of goat in Kashmir valley is a good meat purpose breed of goat. That attains an appreciable body weight under a low input production system. As these goats are mainly reared by Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes of the J & K state, so they usually are fed with the weeds, herbs, shrubs and grasses of pastures that will otherwise go waste. These goats constitute the main livestock wealth. With the good productive and reproductive potential, it makes these animals an important animal protein source for developing countries like India. The myostatin gene (GDF8) is important in the physiology of stock animals because its product produces a direct effect on muscle development and consequently also on meat production. The myostatin sequence is known in several mammalian species and shows a high degree of amino acid sequence conservation, although several alterations in the intron and exon regions have been identified. The objective of our work is to characterize the myostatin coding regions using gene sequencing and polymerase chain reaction methods of Capra hircus (Bakerwal breed) and to compare them with the Ovis aries and other livestock species of animal, looking for variations in nucleotide and protein sequences. As mutations in the myostatin gene can inactivate its expression and result in a non-functional protein, which leads to increase in muscle growth in many species. In this way, we are able to identify 3 alterations on the presumed myostatin protein sequence as compared to non double-muscled ovine sequences.
Highlights
The Bakerwal goat (Capra hircus) is an important animal but is a major meat and/or milk producer but has been underutilized as compared to other stock animals used in husbandry, because these animals are mainly reared by Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes of the J & K state
After quantification and dilution of the DNA samples, the regions corresponding to the three exons of the Bakerwal goat growth differentiation factor 8 (GDF8) gene were amplified by PCR using primer pairs designed from Capra hircus DNA sequences (Table 1)
The nucleotide sequences of exons 1, 2 and 3 of the GDF8 gene of Bakerwal goat were deposited in GenBank under Accession No KU980201, KU991727 and KX171679 respectively
Summary
The Bakerwal goat (Capra hircus) is an important animal but is a major meat and/or milk producer but has been underutilized as compared to other stock animals used in husbandry, because these animals are mainly reared by Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes of the J & K state. The role of protein factors responsible in the development of muscle mass in goats has been best elucidated by the study of the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) superfamily of genes, which encode important factors for the regulation of embryo development and tissue homeostasis in adult animals. Within this family, growth differentiation factor 8 (GDF8) encodes the myostatin protein that is expressed during muscle development and in adult skeletal muscle [1]. Proteasic digestion processing between the propeptide domain and the C-terminal domain results in an N-terminal propeptide and the mature form of myostatin, a 12-kDa carboxy-terminal fragment. The only active form of the protein is the processed myostatin dimer [2]
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