Analysing Genetic Structure of Camelus dromedarius Using PCA and Hierarchical clustering methods

Patterns in heritable molecular data can be used to summarize the relationships between populations of a species. In Iran, camels are providers of milk, meat and fibers. Using of 81 reproductive individuals belonging to five sampling locations of Camelus dromedarius in Kerman province, eight microsatellite markers (YWLL08, VOLP03, VOLP08, YWLL38, CVR01, YWLL44, VOLP32 and VOLP67) were analyzed to genetic structure and genetic distance in these populations. DNA extraction was conducted with optimized and modified salting-out method. The polymerase chain reactions for 81 individuals were successfully done with all primers and then amplification products were resolved on 8% polyacrylamid gel and stained with silver nitrate. The highest genetic distance obtained between Shahr-e Babak and Sahra-e Jahad (0.56) populations and the lowest genetic distance was observed between the two populations of Rafsanjan (0.11). Principal component analysis indicated that all samples could be mainly regrouped into three main clusters and most suitable number of genetic groups in dataset was explained. Results of this study indicated that in the first level of clustering, Shahr-e Babak, Rafsanjan1 and Rafsanjan 2 populations shared the same cluster and Shamshir Abad had another separate cluster while Sahra-e Jahad population appeared as an independent cluster. A similarity of geographical distribution was in good accordance with founded genetic relationships in this study.