Abstract
To estimate the genetic diversity of the only captive Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) population in China, 40 umbilical cord samples were collected and mitochondrial (control region) and nuclear (microsatellite) variabilities were assessed. Both of the markers revealed low genetic variability (or high genetic homogeneity) within the population. The microsatellites yielded monitoring ranges of 2–6 alleles. The observed heterozygosities ranged from 0.28 to 0.83, and the expected heterozygosities were between 0.27 and 0.71. The Shannon information index (Shannon I) and Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) presented overall means of 0.87 and 0.43, respectively. The gene diversity was 0.49. We found only two haplotypes in the population, and the haplotype and nucleotide diversities were 39.1% and 1.13%, respectively. Founder events, bottlenecks and inbreeding have contributed to the low genetic variation observed in this population. Our findings revealed the extent of genetic diversity maintained in the present population and the urgency of implementing a protection plan, introducing animals from other populations to enhance saiga’s genetic variation.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Kholodova M V, Milner-Gulland E J, Easton A J, et al. Mitochondrial DNA variation and population structure of the Critically Endangered saiga antelope Saiga tatarica. Oryx, 2006, 40: 103–107
Zhang X L, Bai S Y, Xu Y C. Molecular biological identification of saiga (in Chinese). J Northeast Forestry Univ, 2006, 34: 106–108
Sambrook J, Fritsch E F, Maniatis T. Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual. 2nd ed. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1995
Zhao S S, Chen X, Wan Q H. Assessment of genetic diversity in the forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) using microsatellite and AFLP markers. Chin Sci Bull, 2011, 56: 2565–2569
Van Oosterhout C, Hutchinson W F, Wills D P M, et al. Micro-checker: Software for identifying and correcting genotyping errors in microsatellite data. Mol Ecol Notes, 2004, 4: 535–538
Rousset F. Genepop’007: A complete re-implementation of the genepop software for Windows and Linux. Mol Ecol Res, 2008, 8: 103–106
Yeh F C, Francis C, Yang R C, et al. POPGENE, the user-friendly shareware for population genetic analysis. Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Centre, University of Alberta, 1997
Goudet J. Fstat version 1.2: A computer program to calculate F-statistics. J Hered, 1995, 86: 485–486
Weir B S, Cockerham C. Estimating F-statistics for analysis of population structure. Evolution, 1984, 36: 1358–1370
Piry S, Luikart G, Cornuet J. MBOTTLENECK: A computer program for detecting recent reductions in the effective population size using allele frequency data. J Hered, 1999, 90: 502–503
Hassanin A, Delsuc F, Ropiquet A, et al. Pattern and timing of diversification of Cetartiodactyla (Mammalia, Laurasiatheria), as revealed by a comprehensive analysis of mitochondrial genomes. C R Biol, 2012, 335: 32–50
Tamura K, Peterson D, Peterson N, et al. MEGA 5: Molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Mol Biol Evol, 2005, 28: 2731–2739
Excoffier L, Laval G, Schneider S. Arlequin ver. 3.0: An integrated software package for population genetics data analysis. Evol Bioinform Online, 2005, 1: 47–50
Karl S A, Castro A L F, Lopez J A, et al. Phylogeography and conservation of the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) inferred from mitochondrial and microsatellite DNA. Conserv Genet, 2010, 12: 371–382
Saitou N, Nei M. The neighbor-joining method: A new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Mol Bio Evol, 1987, 4: 406–425
Campos P F, Kristensen T, Orlando L, et al. Ancient DNA sequences point to a large loss of mitochondrial genetic diversity in the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) since the Pleistocene. Mol Ecol, 2010, 19: 4863–4875
Cornuet J M, Luikart G. Description and power analysis of two tests for detecting recent population bottlenecks from allele frequency data. Genetics, 1996, 144: 2001–2014
Norris A T, Bradley D G, Cunningham E P. Microsatellite genetic variation between and within farmed and wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations. Aquaculture, 1999, 180: 247–264
Kholodova M V, Milner-Gulland E J, Easton A J, et al. Mitochondrial DNA variation and population structure of the Critically Endangered saiga antelope Saiga tatarica. Oryx, 2006, 40: 103–107
Kholodova M V, Sorokin P A, Lushchekina A A. Changes in the genetic diversity of European Saiga tatarica during a drastic population depression. Doklady Biol Sci, 2005, 404: 358–359
Kholodova M V, Lushchekina A A, Neronov V M, et al. Comparative analysis of the Kalmyk and Mongolian Saiga genetic diversity. Doklady Biol Sci, 2001, 376: 102–104
Frankham R. Genetics and extinction. Biol Conserv, 2005, 126: 131–140
Desalle R, Amato G. The expansion of conservation genetics. Nature, 2004, 5: 702–712
Pan H J, Shi F L, Chang Z F, et al. Mitochondrial DNA variation analysis suggests extreme low genetic diversity in Guizhou snubnosed monkeys (Thinopithecus brelichi). Chin Sci Bull, 2011, 56: 2541–2544
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
These authors contributed equally to this work.
This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Rights and permissions
This article is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
About this article
Cite this article
Zhao, S., Xu, C., Liu, G. et al. Microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA assessment of the genetic diversity of captive Saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) in China. Chin. Sci. Bull. 58, 2163–2167 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-013-5812-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-013-5812-4