Assigning Individuals to the Camel Populations of North of Kerman Province Using Microsatellite Markers

Determination of dispersion is one of the major challenges in the biological studies. Also, assignment test is applied to identify the origin of a specific individual, population differentiation and medical forensic cases. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the genetic diversity and assigning individuals to 5 populations of Camelus dromedarius in north of Kerman using 8 autosomal microsatellite markers. Eighty one blood samples were collected from Shahr-e Babak, Rafsanjan and Ravar. Total DNAs of the samples using salting out were extracted and applied for genotyping analysis. The expected heterozygosity varied from 0.77 in Sahra-e Jahad population to 0.84 in Rafsenjan 1 population. The individual’s assignment was done using 7 different methods. Among the methods base on the likelihood, the Rannala and Mountain method and among the methods base on the genetic distance, Nei DA method showed the highest accuracy. Totally, markers used in this study could assign the individuals to their source population with 29 % accuracy.