Application of ITS1 and ITS2 for population genetic studies of sturgeons (Acipenseridae)

Poster (download)

305

Guzel Davletshina¹, Sergey Kliver², Elena Interesova³, Dmitry Prokopov⁴, Vladimir Trifonov^5
1IMCB SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia; ICG SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia, guzel@mcb.nsc.ru
²IMCB SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia, skliver@mcb.nsc.ru
³TSU, Tomsk, Russia, e.interesova@ngs.ru
⁴ICG SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia, dprokopov@mcb.nsc.ru
⁵IMCB SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia; NSU, Novosibirsk, Russia, vlad@mcb.nsc.ru

The order Acipenseridae is a very interesting group for evolutionary genetics: all species have unique morphology, inter-specific hybrids are widely occurring and there are variations between species in ploidy levels. Most acipenserids are endangered due to poaching and special efforts are required for the maintenance of natural populations. The genetic studies of acipenserids are still limited, although these are needed for successful farming. ITS – is the DNA spacer located between the small subunit and large subunit rRNA genes. The genes encoding ribosomal RNAs are located one after another in tandem and are repeated several hundred times, so we use new generation sequencing to estimate the frequency of occurrence of SNPs in the genome of one organism. ITS1 and ITS2 are used as phylogenetic markers to study the relationships between highly diverged taxonomic groups [1]. Despite high interest to different sturgeon species, acipenserid ITS1 and ITS2 sequences are missing in the GenBank depository, and most sturgeon population studies are performed using mitochondrial markers. Here we study the structure of ITS1 and ITS2 in several sturgeon species and demonstrate efficiency of these nuclear markers for species identification and interspecific hybrids confirmation.