A highly polymorphic insertion in the Y-chromosome amelogenin gene can be used for evolutionary biology, population genetics and sexing in Cetacea and Artiodactyla.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The early radiation of the Cetartiodactyla is complex, and unambiguous molecular characters are needed to clarify the positions of hippotamuses, camels and pigs relative to the remaining taxa (Cetacea and Ruminantia). There is also a need for informative genealogic markers for Y-chromosome population genetics as well as a sexing method applicable to all species from this group. We therefore studied the sequence variation of a partial sequence of the evolutionary conserved amelogenin gene to assess its potential use in each of these fields.

Results and discussion

We report a large interstitial insertion in the Y amelogenin locus in most of the Cetartiodactyla lineages (cetaceans and ruminants). This sex-linked size polymorphism is the result of a 460-465 bp inserte

SUBMITTER: Mace M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2580767 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature