Al-Soudy A, El-Sayed A, El-Itriby HA and Hussein EHA
The genetic diversity, relationships and population structure of sixty Egyptian camels derived from four breeds (Baladi, Sudani, Somali, and Maghrabi) were investigated using 18 microsatellite (SSRs) loci. In addition, the four breeds were genotyped using 16 Start Codon Targeted (SCoT) primers. A total of 346 SSR alleles were detected across the four camel breeds with an overall mean of 9.3 ± 0.66 alleles / locus. The mean number of alleles (MNA) and effective number of alleles (Ne) ranged from 9.2 ± 1.45 in the Baladi to 9.5 ± 1.27 in the Maghrabi breeds and from 6.5 ± 0.82 in the Maghrabi to 7.1 ± 0.93 in the Somali breeds, respectively. The values of observed heterozygosity (HObs) and expected heterozygosity (HExp) per breed varied from 0.82 ± 0.07 in the Maghrabi to 0.87 ± 0.07 in the Sudani camel breeds, and from 0.75 ± 0.03 in the Sudani to 0.79 ± 0.03 in the Maghrabi breeds , respectively. The genetic diversity estimated as the Shannon's information index (I) revealed the highest value (1.88 ± 0.14) in the Maghrabi and the lowest value (1.78 ± 0.18) in the Sudani breed. The values for fixation indices (FIS, FST and FIT) were -0.07284, 0.12364 and 0.05981, respectively. Thus indicating a moderate level of differentiation among the four breeds and a random mating process within each breed. The genetic structure revealed that the three breeds (Baladi, Sudani and Maghrabi) were genetically distinct and look like pure breeds, while the Somali breed showed some degree of admixture. A total of 153 amplicons were generated by the 16 SCoT primers, with an average of 9.56 amplicon/ primer and a polymorphism rate of 49%. The phylogenetic tree based on microsatellite and SCoT markers revealed that Maghrabi was separated in one cluster while, the second cluster comprised two sub-clusters. Sudani and Somali formed one sub-cluster and Baladi was in the second sub-cluster. Thus, the closest phylogenetic relationship was between the Sudani and Somali breeds.
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