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 ( ), and the lowest parameter was for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino ( ). In all populations, there is a deficiency of heterozygosity. The largest genetic diversity was found in loci and with 16 alleles, and the smallest polymorphism was noted for the locus with 8 alleles. The level of observed heterozygosity was in the range for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino and for Kazakh fat-tailed coarse wool. The expected heterozygosity level range was from for Kazakh Arkhar-Merino to for Edilbay-1. When 12 microsatellite loci are compared, the locus showed the highest level of genetic variability. Excess of heterozygosity was observed at three loci; , , and . 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.