MICROSATELLITE MARKERS POLYMORPHISM BETWEEN TWO EGYPTIAN GOAT POPULATIONS (Capra hircus)

Two native goat populations present in El-Farafra and Siwa oases, located in the Western Desert of Egypt were geno-typed using ten microsatellite molecular markers (SSR). Blood samples taken from a total of 34 individual goats, 14 from Farafra and 20 from Siwa, were subjected to DNA extraction and subsequently to SSR-PCR amplification. The number of alleles ranged from two for MAF70 marker to seven for OarFCB48 and SRCRSP8 loci, the average number per population for Farafra goats was 3.0 and 3.4 for Siwa goats with a total number of a 42 alleles for both populations. The mean observed heterozygosity (Ho) and expected heterozygosity (HE) for both populations varied from 0.21 to 0.24 and 0.56 to 0.59, respectively. Fixation indices revealed a 0.7063 variation referring to differences among individuals versus total variance (Fit). While, among populations differences versus total variance had a lower fixation index (Fst = 0.2371) indicating low level of genetic differentiation between Farafra and Siwa populations. A pair wise difference between Farafra and Siwa goat populations was (0.6151) based on among breeds F index (Fis).The highest PIC was observed for SRCRSP8 microsatellite marker (0.791) and the lowest PIC was 0.375 for SRCRSP23. The average PIC of the ten markers was 0.530 and 0.570 for Farafra and Siwa goat populations, respectively, which indicated that the ten microsatellite markers contained highly polymorphic loci in both Egyptian goat populations. In the genetic diversity analysis, microsatellite markers with PIC>0.7 were taken as the most ideal selected markers. From the selected microsatellite markers in the present study, the PIC of OarFCB48 and SRCRSP8 (Siwa) exceeded 0.7 which indicated that these loci could be used as genetic markers for genetic diversity analysis of Siwa goat population. The markers generated by OarFCB48 and SRCRSP8 loci could be utilized in marker assisted selection (MAS) to improve the performance of Egyptian goat populations.