PARTIAL SEQUENCING AND INVESTIGATION OF LEPTIN AND CALPAIN, CANDIDATE GENES FOR MEAT QUALITY IN CAMEL

摘要

Achieving greater improvements in meat quality was very slow before molecular markers became an accessible technology in breeding. Camel meat is a major source of animal protein, therefore investigation for meat quality and related genes have of great importance. LEP (Leptin) and CAPN1 (mu-Calpain) have been considered as two candidate genes for carcass performance and meat quality traits in the farm animals. The micro molar calcium-activated neutral protease (CAPN1) gene encodes mu-calpain that degrades myofibril proteins under the postmortem conditions which appears to be the primary enzyme in the postmortem tenderisation process. Leptin is the hormone product of the obese (LEP) gene. The role of leptin as a lipostatic signal in regulating whole-body energy metabolism makes it one of the best physiological markers of body weight and. food intake. In current study, genomic DNA was extracted from 25 Iranian native camels and amplified using published primers that were designed based on bovine CAPN1 and ovine LEP gene sequences. The amplified fragments of LEP and CAPN1 obtained from all samples with 471 and 787 bp length, respectively and were sequenced. Alignment results of sequences showed no difference in sequences of the two genes in all of studied animals, and also between one-humped and two-humped camels. All of the sequences identified here shared high similarity with the published LEP and CAPN1 sequences from cattle and other species.