SEQUENCE DIVERSITY AND PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS IN PAKISTANI SPOTTED DEER (Axis axis)

Spotted deer or "Chital" are one of the most common wild herbivore found in forests. The main objective of the study was to assess the genetic variations in mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene, mitochondrial cytochrome-c gene and mitochondrial d-loop region in Pakistani spotted deer. DNA was extracted from fecal samples of unrelated animals of spotted deer from different localities. PCR primers were designed by Primer software and amplification of gene was done by Polymerase Chain Reaction. The PCR products were sequenced. Variations in nucleotide were identified by alignment. Blast 2 sequences, Clustal W, MEGA 3, Bioconductor in "R" were used for analysis. Multidimensional scaling plot of mitochondrial cytochrome-b, c and d-loop region, Pair Wise Evolutionary Distance and Phylogenetic Tree was constructed. Variable sites in Cytochrome-b, Cytochrome-c and d-loop region were identified in spotted deer. Allele frequency of all variations was calculated and low mutant allele frequency was observed. High homozygosity was observed in all spotted deer and differences were very low. This is the first report on molecular genetics of spotted deer from Pakistan. The finding of this research is prerequisite for future research.