Evaluation of Kappa-Casein (CSN3) Gene Polymorphism of Markhoz Goats by RFLP and SSCP Methods

The genetic polymorphism of goat caseins has raised a considerable research interest due to its relationship with milk composition and technological characteristics important for cheese making. The goat milk also is important in human nutrition because of its quite different composition from bovine milk. In this study، the blood samples of 80 goats were collected from a herd kept in Sanandaj research station. After extraction of genomic DNA، two separate fragments of 407 and 279bp of goat kappa-casein gene located on exon four were amplified using specific primers and analyzed using PCR-SSCP and PCR-RFLP techniques، respectively. The 279-bp fragment had polymorphic restriction sites for HaeIII and TaqI endonucleases for alleles E and K، respectively but these alleles were not seen in this population. In the SSCP، 13 different alleles such as A، G، C''، J، M، C، H، B''، D/I/L and B''/B were identified. The allele A and B with frequencies of 0. 401 and 0. 018 were the most frequent and the lowest frequency respectively. The results of this research showed that combination of these two techniques can determine polymorphism presented in the studied population.