用于海南坡鹿遗传多样性研究的多态性微卫星DNA标记(英文)

Polymorphic microsatellite DNA markers for the vulnerable Hainan Eld’s deer Cervus eldi hainanus in China

海南坡鹿(Cervus eldi hainanus)是坡鹿的一个亚种,仅分布于中国海南岛,该种群在二十世纪七十年代经历了严重的瓶颈效应。为了解该物种的遗传多样性及亲缘关系,本文从牛科及其它鹿科的已报道的104对微卫星位点中筛选了10对保守性好、多态性较高的微卫星位点。这10对微卫星位点的期望杂合度范围为0·042到0·640 ,等位基因数为2至6 ,因此是多态性较好的微卫星位点,不仅可用于检测海南坡鹿的遗传多样性,同时还可以适用于其它偶蹄目动物的相关研究[动物学报51 (3) : 530 -534 , 2005]。

Hainan Eld’s deer Cervus eldi hainanus is a subspecies of the Eld’s deer Cervus eldi endemic to Hainan Island in south China (Xu et al.,1983; Decoux,1993; Wang et al., 2001). In the 1970s, Hainan Eld’s deer was once reduced to 26 individuals due to poaching and the degradation of habitats (Wang,1979), and thus has experienced a severe population bottleneck. Under current IUCN criteria, the species is classified as vulnerable and listed on CITES Appendix Ⅰ (Liu, 1998). The overall population size has now increased to more than 1 000 individuals (Yuan et al., 2001), largely due to restoration and captive-breeding programs implemented over the last 30 years. However, earlier conservation efforts have largely focused on increasing population size, and not enough attention was paid to breeding management. There is practically no information on genetic relatedness of the 26 founder individuals. This will undoubtedly affect further effective management of the deer population and place them under potential risk of serious inbreeding. A study on genetic diversity, relatedness and kinships of the current populations is clearly needed. This requires the employment of highly polymorphic molecular markers. Microsatellite DNA should be the most suitable DNA marker for this purpose (Zhang and Hewitt,2003). The development of microsatellite DNA markers for a species is not only laborious and technique-demanding, but also expensive. It often involves the construction of a genomic library, screening with oligonucleotide probes, sequencing analysis of a large number of clones. A relatively inexpensive approach is to exploit microsatellites developed from closely related species. Many studies have already confirmed that microsatellite flanking sequences are often conserved across closely-related species and sometimes even across genera and families. This appears to be particularly true in ungulates (e.g. Pepin et al., 1995; Roed and Midthjell,1998; Slate et al.,1998; Perez et al.,2000; Maudet et al.,2001). Thus we have adopted this approach to identify microsatellites for Hainan Eld’s deer.