A Study of the Genetic Structure of Hybrid Camels in Kazakhstan.

Camel farming is gaining scientific interest due to its unique agricultural characteristics. Camels are versatile for milk and meat production, wool, racing, transport, and tourism. To use their full potential, it is essential to improve our understanding of the genetic structure of these animals. One-humped and two-humped camels have received detailed genetic descriptions, while there is no such information for their hybrids, which outperform their parent species in several agricultural characteristics. Thus, in this study, for the first time, the whole genome sequencing data (WGS) of five hybrid camels bred in the Almaty region of Kazakhstan are presented in comparison with the WGS data of one-humped, two-humped, and wild camels. A total of 43,552,164 single-nucleotide polymorphisms were found across the studied groups. Further comparison of these SNPs showed the following number of private SNPs among the populations: hybrid camels (3,271,083), wild camels (2,515,591), Bactrians (1,244,694), and dromedaries (531,224). The genetic structure of the studied animals was described, and a phylogenetic tree was built to assess their genetic distance. It was found that the studied hybrids are genetically closer to dromedaries since they were on the close branch of the phylogenetic tree.

Genetic diversity of different breeds of Kazakh sheep using microsatellite analysis.

A total of 75 individuals from five sheep populations in Kazakhstan were investigated based on 12 STR (short tandem repeat, also known as microsatellite) markers in order to study their genetic structure and phylogenetic relationship based on genetic distances. These sheep had a high level of genetic diversity. In total, 163 alleles were found in all the populations using 12 microsatellite loci. The mean number of alleles, effective number of alleles, and polymorphism information content (PIC) values per loci were 13.4, 5.9, and 0.78, respectively. Comparing the allelic diversity between the populations, the highest genetic diversity was observed in the Edilbay-1 sheep breed ( 8.333 ± 0.644 ), and the lowest parameter was for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino ( 7.083 ± 0.633 ). In all populations, there is a deficiency of heterozygosity. The largest genetic diversity was found in loci INRA023 and CSRD247 with 16 alleles, and the smallest polymorphism was noted for the locus D5S2 with 8 alleles. The level of observed heterozygosity was in the range 0.678 ± 0.051 for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino and 0.767 ± 0.047 for Kazakh fat-tailed coarse wool. The expected heterozygosity level range was from 0.702 ± 0.033 for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino to 0.777 ± 0.023 for Edilbay-1. When 12 microsatellite loci are compared, the OarFCB20 locus showed the highest level of genetic variability. Excess of heterozygosity was observed at three loci; MAF065, McM042, and OarFCB20. The highest genetic distance was observed between Kazakh Arkhar-Merino and Edilbay-1, whereas the genetic distance between Edilbay-1 and Edilbay-2 is the smallest using Nei's standard genetic distance. The Edilbay-1 sheep breed possesses the largest genetic diversity among these five populations.