Phylogenetic Relationships Among Two Nigerian Goat Breeds and Kalahari Red Goat of South Africa

Abstract Text: Mitochondrial DNA polymorphism and phylogenetic relationships among two Nigerian goat breeds: West African Dwarf (WAD) (n=35) and Red Sokoto (RS) (n=37), and Kalahari Red (KR) goat (n=38) imported from South Africa were investigated due to dearth of published information on the breeds. First hypervariable region (HV1) of mtDNA (481bp) sequenced from 110 goats represented 68 haplotypes. Polymorphism of HV1 fragment was high, haplotype diversities were 0.985±0.011, 0.992±0.008 and 0.869±0.030 for WAD, RS and KR respectively. Corresponding nucleotide diversities were 0.0144±0.0068, 0.0166±0.0079 and 0.0299±0.0067. Maximum-likelihood tree constructed with 68 haplotypes and 22 reference haplotypes representing 6 haplogroups worldwide revealed that all 28 haplotypes of WAD, 32 of RS and 6 out of 11 haplotypes of KR belong to haplogroup A, while 5 haplotypes of KR belong to lineage B. Results of this investigation will be useful for planning improvement programme for local populations.

Keywords:

mtDNA

Polymorphism

Phylogenetic relationships

Goat