Genetic management of wild Asian elephants (Elephas Maximus) in Thailand - cytochrome b
Summary
To investigate the maternal lineages of the wild population of Asian Elephants (Elephas Maximus) in two wildlife parks in Thailand, (Kaeng Krachan National Park and Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary) dung samples were collected and analyzed. DNA was isolated and purified from the dung and screened for sequence variation at the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. A 350 bp part of the cytochrome b gene was amplified and a 261bp part was aligned and compared to the sequences found by Iertwatcharasarakul et al (2003), Vandebona et al ( 2002), Hartl et al (1996), Noro et al.(1998) and some other published sequences from the NCBI database.
Three haplotypes (A, B, C) were found in Kaeng Krachan National Park which matched the haplotypes found by Iertwatcharasarakul et al (2003) in the domestic population of Thai elephants. Only haplotypes A and C were found in Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary, but not all samples could be amplified successfully.
Clusters A and B which have also been described in the other papers, were also seen in this paper.