DNA MICROSATELLITES FOR GENETIC IDENTIFICATION IN BRAZILIAN MURRAH WATER BUFFALOES

Nobre Vieira, JulianaSalviano Teixeira, CláudiaYukio Kuabara, MarceloAparecida Andrade de Oliveira, Denise

Brazilian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) population is currently approximately 3,000,000. Despite of this fact, genealogical control is still one of the problems of the Brazilian selection and breeding programs. The DNA test is important to develop a system that allows the animal genealogy certification as well as its undeniable individual and parentage identification. The present study was performer by using a panel of 14 microsatellites markers in Brazilian Murrah buffaloes (n=100) in order to estimate the genetic variability and calculate the parentage exclusion probability. A total of 92 alleles were detected in the whole sample and the number of alleles varied from one (locus D5S2) to 13 (locus CSSM47). The Polymorphism Information Content values ranged from 0.00 (locus D5S2) to 0.845 (locus BM1706). Heterozygosity values ranged from 0.00 (D5S2) to 0.861 (BM1706). The paternity exclusion probabilities when only one and both parents were analyzed was 0.985424 (PE-1) and 0.999541 (PE-2), respectively. Observed a probability of exclusion of 0.999998% when both parents (PE-3) were tested for the set of 14 microsatellites. This panel is already used in Italy for the Mediterranean buffaloes, one of the four breeds raised in Brazil. However, it is highly recommended that new loci are analyzed in order to increase the microsatellites panel repertoire used for genealogical studi