Mitochondrial DNA Cytochrome-b variability in Iranian Kurdish horse

Investigation of mitochondrial genome sequence of cytochrome-b region within population can be a good indicator for diversity in the studied population. A recent study was conducted to investigate the genetic diversity in Kurdish horses and phylogenetic relationship of between Kurdish horse with other horse breeds in the world using cytochrome-b region. Blood samples were collected from 30 Kurdish horses and total DNA was extracted by modified salting out method. Cytochrome-b sequences were amplified by primers pairs with 1029 bp length and then were sequenced after purifying. The sequences were trimmed to 882 bp using BioEdit software. The samples were aligned with the horse reference sequence with access number (X79547) using Clustal-W package. Haplotype and polymorphic site numbers, Haplotype and nucleotide diversity were estimated using DNASP4 software. Phylogenetic tree was constructed in MEGA7 software by neighbor joining method. 7 haplotypes with 7 polymorphic site were identified. Whole haplotypes were belonged to K haplogroup. Haplotype and nucleotide diversities were 0.784±0.001 and 0.00218±0.001, respectively. The compositional frequency of consensus sequences was including: A base, 21.27%; C base, 32.77%; G base, 13.15% and T base, 26.87%. According to the phylogenetic analysis, Kurdish horses were genetically more closely related to Japanese and Chinese breeds and one Polish and Saudi Arabian breeds which shows that Kurdish horse has genetic similarities with Asian and some European horse breeds.