Genetic Characterization of Southern Nigerian Indigenous Turkey Using Mitochondrial DNA

Abstract

The first Hypervariable (HV1) region of the mtDNA of 84 Nigerian indigenous turkey (NIT) sampled from Rivers, Kwara, Ebonyi, Oyo and Lagos states were amplified using DBF; 5'-AGGAGGAGGAGACCCAATCC-3 and 5'-CAGTGGGTGAAGCCTGCTAA-3' as forward and reverse primers respectively. PCR amplicons were sequenced using the Sanger sequencing method. The sequences were viewed using Bioedit software, edited, trimmed, aligned and single nucleotide polymorphism was identified using MEGA 11. Diversity indices were estimated using ARLEQUIN software. The genetic distances and phylogenetic relationship between the mtDNA sequences of the NIT and those of 12 birds obtained from Genbank were estimated using the pairwise distance and Neighbor-joining method of MEGA

11 respectively. Also, an analysis of molecular variance was used to determine the population structure using ARLEQUIN software and the demographic indices were also estimated using DnaSP v6. Result from this study showed a non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism at position g.6170(A>G) in eighteen samples and two haplotypes (Hap_1 and Hap_2) were detected. The entire population showed low haplotype diversity (0.3409) and very low nucleotide diversity (0.00073). The genetic distances estimated between sampled populations were low (0.00), which showed they were very related. The phylogenetic tree further confirmed the degree of closeness observed in the estimated genetic distance values. Analysis of molecular variance showed that the genetic variation among populations (8.64%) was lower than the genetic variation within populations (91.36%). This observation and the low fixation index indicated that the sub-populations were not differentiated. The demographic indices showed that some sub-populations were evolving neutrally while some were expanding.