Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene.

ABSTRACT: Trade in ivory from extant elephant species namely Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is regulated internationally, while the trade in ivory from extinct species of Elephantidae, including woolly mammoth, is unregulated. This distinction creates opportunity for laundering and trading elephant ivory as mammoth ivory. The existing morphological and molecular genetics methods do not reliably distinguish the source of ivory items that lack clear identification characteristics or for which the quality of extracted DNA cannot support amplification of large gene fragments. We present a PCR-sequencing method based on 116 bp target sequence of the cytochrome b gene to specifically amplify elephantid DNA wh

SUBMITTER: Ngatia JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906310 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature