Assignment of Individuals to Six Chicken Populations Using Microsatellite Markers

Determination of dispersion is one of the major challenges in the biological studies. The aim of this study was to determine the genetic diversity and assignment of individuals to 6 chicken populations including a synthetic strain Giriraja، Naked Neck، White silky، Local، commercial broiler and layer using 9 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers (ADL158، ADL278، MCW5، MCW29، MCW16، MCW37، MCW69، MCW104 AND MCW119). The blood samples were taken from 16 birds of each population and after DNA extraction، the samples were amplified using the specific primers for all of the markers. The observed polymorphism of the loci for commercial layers and White silky was 77. 8 and 88. 89، respectively، and for other populations was 100 percent. Markers MCW29 and MCW37 showed maximum and minimum of genetic diversity، respectively. MCW5 locus had the highest (14) and MCW37 had the lowest (3) alleles over all of the populations. MCW5 was the only marker with just one specific allele. The individuals assignment was done using 8 different methods. Among them، the Goldstein et al''s genetic distance showed the lowest (%74. 0) and Cavalli-Sforza and Edwards method showed the highest (%91. 7) percentage of individuals assignment to populations.