DNA fingerprinting in roe deer using the digoxigenated probe (GTG)5

The digoxigenin-labelled oligonucleotide (GTG)5 was used as a multilocus probe to detect hypervariable microsatellites in roe deer DNA digested with HaeIII. The resulting fingerprints of 24 animals belonging to four subpopulations were characterized with regard to within-subpopulation as well as between-subpopulation similarity. The mean number of polymorphic fragments was 20 and the average band-sharing rate for unrelated animals 0.27. A mean probability of 91.5% for a fragment to be present in the heterozygous state was evaluated and the probabilities of identical band patterns in unrelated individuals were estimated to be in the range 1.3 x 10(-16)-2.5 x 10(-18). Though band-sharing rates of animals belonging to different subpopulations (range 0.18-0.24) were lower than those of within-subpopulations, several measures of population subdivision and the genetic distance do not reveal a striking differentiation of the subpopulations studied.