Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia.
Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2020 Mar 4;10(1):3973. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60552-y.
A molecular sexing method by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of a portion of the sex-determining region Y (SRY) and the zinc finger (ZF) gene, as well as six equine Y-chromosome-specific microsatellite markers, were tested in the Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus). While the microsatellite markers did not yield any male-specific amplicons for sex-typing, the SRY/ZF marker system produced reliable molecular sexing results by accurately sex-typing 31 reference Malayan tapirs, using whole blood, dried blood spot (DBS), or tissue samples as materials for DNA extraction. The marker system was also tested on 16 faecal samples, and the results were in general consistent with the pre-determined sexes of the animals, despite some amplification failures. A preliminary estimation of wild Malayan tapir population sex ratio was estimated from the Wildlife Genomic Resource Bank (WGRB) database of the Malaysian Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN), zoos, and the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Conservation Centre (WCC), as well as from the results of molecular sexing 12 samples of unknown sex. The overall sex ratio favoured females, but the deviation from parity was statistically not significant when tested using the binomial test (p > 0.05), which may be due to reduced statistical power caused by small sample sizes.
采用聚合酶链反应（PCR）扩增 Y 染色体性别决定区（SRY）和锌指（ZF）基因的一部分以及六个马属 Y 染色体特异性微卫星标记的分子性别鉴定方法，在马来貘（Tapirus indicus）中进行了测试。虽然微卫星标记未能产生任何用于性别鉴定的雄性特异性扩增子，但 SRY/ZF 标记系统通过准确地对 31 只参考马来貘的全血、干血斑（DBS）或组织样本进行 DNA 提取，产生了可靠的分子性别鉴定结果。该标记系统还在 16 份粪便样本上进行了测试，结果与动物的预定性别总体上一致，尽管存在一些扩增失败的情况。根据马来西亚野生动物和国家公园部（PERHILITAN）、动物园的野生动物基因组资源库（WGRB）数据库以及分子性别鉴定 12 份未知性别的样本的结果，对野生马来貘种群的性别比例进行了初步估计。总体而言，雌性比例较高，但二项式检验（p > 0.05）并未显示出统计学上的显著差异，这可能是由于样本量较小导致统计能力降低所致。
