Department of Anatomy and Histology, Sindh Agriculture University, TandoJam, Pakistan;¹Department of Veterinary Anatomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan;²Institute of Animal Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany; 3Department of Livestock Ecology, Humboldt-Universität zu Germany

Abstract

       Myostatin, also called growth differentiation factor-8 (GDF-8), is a member of the mammalian growth transforming family (TGF-beta superfamily), which is expressed specifically in developing an adult skeletal muscle. Muscular hypertrophy allele (mh allele) in the double muscle breeds involved mutation within the myostatin gene. Genomic DNA was isolated from the camel hair using NucleoSpin Tissue kit. Two animals of each of the six breeds namely, Marecha, Dhatti, Larri, Kohi, Sakrai and Cambelpuri were used for sequencing. For PCR amplification of the gene, a primer pair was designed from homolog regions of already published sequences of farm animals from GenBank. Results showed that camel myostatin possessed more than 90% homology with that of cattle, sheep and pig. Camel formed separate cluster from the pig in spite of having high homology (98%) and showed 94% homology with cattle and sheep as reported in literature. Sequence analysis of the PCR amplified part of exon 1 (256 bp) of the camel myostatin was identical among six camel breeds.

Key words: Myostatin gene, sequencing, camel.