IS THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OF ALGERIAN SHEEP BREEDS THREATENED: CASE OF THE GENETIC VARIABILITY OF SOME SHEEP BREEDS USING MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

Description

Abstract

The genetic structure and diversity of eight local sheep breeds: “Sidaoun, Rembi, Hamra, D’men, Ouled Djellal, Sardi, Berguia and Daraa”, were determined by performing an analysis of ten microsatellite loci in 183 unrelated individuals. Allele diversity, observed heterozygosity, expected heterozygosity and Unbiased Expected heterozygosity, and genetic distance have been calculated. Wright F-statistics, (FIS, FIT and FST) values were determined. Additionally, the average number of alleles per locus was estimated. Within breeds, the mean number of alleles ranged from 12.60 in D’men to 17.80 in Ouled Djellal. Mean expected heterozygosity (He) varied between 0.83 in Sidaoun and 0.91 in Ouled Djellal. Inbreeding coefficient for all microsatellites is low and negative FIS = -0.014 ranging from -0.057 for INRA063 to 0.018 in McM42. The mean genetic differentiation FST was 0.062, showing that only 6.2% of total genetic variation is due to genetic differentiation among populations, while genetic differentiation within each population constitutes 93.8% of total genetic variance. In the phylogenetic tree based on genetic distance, three groups were detected; D’men/ Sidaoun, Ouled Djellal/ Rembi/ Berguia, and finally Sardi/ Daraa. However, the Hamra sheep breed was alone in a separate cluster.

This study on the genetic diversity of sheep in Algeria provides important information on Hamra, Rembi, D’men and Sidaoun  sheep genetic resources (wich deserve a high priority for conservation), and can contribute to the development of a national strategy for genetic improvement of local sheep breeds in Algeria. In fact, our results confirmed that the used microsatellite markers were suitably polymorphic and that they could be successfully used for investigating genetic diversity in Algerian sheep populations.