Full Length Research Paper

Molecular characterization of leptin (obese) gene in domesticated Yak (Bos grunniens)

V. B. Dongre¹*, Avtar Singh¹, P. P. Dubey², D. S. Gour², Prashant², Goutam Mondal³, Ashwani Sharma¹, B. K. Joshi² and Dinesh Kumar²

¹Dairy Cattle Breeding Division, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana-132001 India.

²Genes and Genetic Resources Molecular Analysis Lab. National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, Karnal, Haryana-132001 India.

³Regional Research Sub-Station of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Science and Technology, Kargil-194102, Kargil (Dist), Jammu and Kashmir, India.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: vilasndri@gmail.com.

Accepted 26 December, 2008

Leptin is obesity gene involved in production and reproduction traits in domestic animals. In the present study complete leptin gene was sequenced in Yak hitherto uncharacterized. The complete leptin gene was sequenced using twelve sets of overlapping primers and submitted to the GenBank. BLAST analysis was performed with other livestock species revealed 98, 98, 97, 95, 95% homology with Bos indicus, Bos taurus, Bubalus bubalis, Capra hircus and Ovis aries, respectively. Also, 54 Yak samples from two geographically different regions of India were used for SNP identification in the coding regions of the gene. Both exon 2 and 3 was found to be highly conserved, the interestingly reported bovine R4C polymorphism was found to be fixed in Yak population.

Key words: Yak, leptin gene, SNP.