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Published on: March 13, 2011
Isolation and characterization of dinucleotide microsatellite loci in the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus)
C Kongrit1, C Siripunkaw, W Y Brockelman
1Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand Institute of Science and Technology for Research and Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Nakhornpathom 73170, Thailand Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Mahidol University, Salaya, Nakhornpathom 73170, Thailand Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
Abstract:
The endangered Asian elephant is found today primarily in protected areas. We characterized 18 dinucleotide microsatellite loci in this species. Allelic diversity ranged from three to eight per locus, and observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.200 to 0.842 in a wild population. All loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, but linkage disequilibrium was detected between two loci in the wild, but not in the zoo elephants. These loci will be useful for the population-level studies of this species.
