Isolation and Characterization of Microsatellite Markers from Endangered Species (Camelus bactrianus)

Iranian bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) is an endangered livestock breed with distribution in northwest of Iran. Microsatellites are a powerful marker for animal genetic and cell line identification and population genetic study. In this study, after producing more than 40 Camelus bactrianus fibroblast cell lines, microsa-tellites loci from the genome of Iranian Camelus bactrianus cell lines were identified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based isolation of microsatellite arrays (PIMA) methods for genetic resources studies. PIMA is a relatively simple method which avoids not only library construction, but also radioactivity ma-nipulation. Four polymorphic microsatellite loci (IBRC01 to IBRC04) were identified. Polymorphism of these new loci was assessed in 40 samples of Iranian bactrian camel. Number of alleles ranged from 3 to 5, observed and expected heterozygosity varied from 0.625 to 0.71 and from 0.642 to 0.807 and Shannon in-dex from 0.89 to 1.603, respectively. The phylogeny analysis of all sequences indicated that breeds and species were grouped according to their geographic locations except a few sequences. These newly isolated polymorphic microsatellite markers would be useful tools for conservation genetic resources and population genetic studies and assessing genetic variations to establish a conservation strategy of this endangered spe-cies.