Study On Species Specific Genetic Markers Of Cervids

With the increasing development of wildlife conservation and foster deer enterprise,there are more and more criminal cases and civil cases that relate to the identification of deer species,subspecies or breeds. For the identification of deer species with body parts like bone,skin,hair,muscle,visceral organ,antler,blood,embryo,and their various products,the traditionalmethods are not likely powerful enough to discriminate these involved samples. For establishing an effective identification methodology,keratin and mtDNA polymorphisms were studied and taken as genetic markers of deer species. The methods established here were proved effective for any deer primary products.1. Keratin and DNA were successfully extracted from hair shaft of deer species,and hereby a non-invasive research method about deer species was set up. Thereafter,almost all deer primary product could be adopted in deer species identification.2 . Hair keratin polymorphisms generated through SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) showed species specific patterns. The keratin patems could be regarded as species specific fingerprints.3. The hair keratin polymorphisms differ with the sampling sit on the body. For different individuals of the same species,an identical keratin fingerprint will be obtained if the hairs come from the same part of body,and vis versa. So,the sampling sit on the body must be clearly emphasized when applying keratin fingerprints to the identification of species.4. It was observed that some keratin components would be not detected through SDS-PAGE due to its low resolution and sensitivity. Therefore,the SDS-PAGE keratin fingerprints should be applicable to the species identification,but not to the phylogenetic analysis.5. Based upon the comparison of Cyto b gene sequences in 15 deer species downloaded from GenBank,a universal primer set L15774/HSF21 was used as positive control of the template quality,at the meantime,two species specific primer sets DF/DR and CF/CR were desgined to identify red deer (Cervus elaphus),sika deer (Cervus nippori) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) from other species. A musk deer (Moschus) specific primer set WF/MR was designed,Siberian musk deer(Afoschus moschiferns) and forest musk desr(Moschus berezovskii) could be discriminated when restriction endonuclease Rsa I was used to cut the PCR products. The species identification methodology of 5 deer species established in this paper achieved reliable,effective,sensitive and reproducible.