Genetic Diversity and Identification of MC1R SNPs Association with Colors in Iraqi Local Ducks

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the study was to reveal the variation in the polymorphisms of Melancortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene and relationship of SNP with colors in Iraqi local duck, in addition to identifying some of molecular characteristics of this gene and identifying the differences in the amino acids of MC1R gene and their differences between the white and gray local duck lines, two local duck lines were selected with 14 white and 14 gray birds, was chosen a region with size 515 bp MC1R gene, where designed the primer of; (Forward primer 5’-, GCTCTTCATGCTGCTGATGG -3, and Reverse primer 5’-, GGCAGGTGACGATGAGGATG -3) by relying on the reference copy under the accession number KU234624.1, the results with PCR technique and electrophoresis proved success of amplification process and fragment was 515 bp. After analyzing sequence of nitrogenous bases for the studied fragment for MC1R gene, two changes were observed in nitrogenous bases, which is known as single nucleotide formation (SNP). The two sites for studied fragment recorded with accession numbers for our study are LC480442.55G> A and LC480443.328C> T. It was observed that the first change site did not lead to any change in the amino acid (valine) at the 126th site of peptide chain of MC1R gene, while the second site resulted in an occurrence change in the amino acid arginine to cysteine at position 217 of peptide chain of the gene. The results showed, it was found that sites of changes in nitrogenous bases were found in both white and gray lines of local ducks, while the study did not show any correlation between these sites with the color of ducks. The results of some molecular tests of the MC1R gene showed that rate of change of nitrogenous bases and the genetic variation for studied frgament is very small when comparing the haplotypes and phylogenetic tree of the animals in this study, and the animals from other countries such as China, it was observed that local ducks possess same nucleotide sequence, which means possibility of dependence origin of local duck of Chinese ducks. The fragments obtained in this study for MC1R gene were recorded at global gene bank sites in NCBI, EMBL and DDBJ under independent accession numbers for our Iraqi local animals which LC480442, LC480443, LC480444, and LC480445.