A Review of the Implications of Heterozygosity and Inbreeding on Germplasm Biodiversity and Its Conservation in the Silkworm, Bombyx mori

Silkworm genebanks assume paramount importance as the reservoirs of biodiversity and source of alleles that can be easily retrieved for genetic enhancement of popular breeds. More than 4000 Bombyx mori L (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae) strains are currently available and these strains are maintained through continuous sibling mating. This repeated sibling mating makes the populations of each strain more homozygous, but leads to loss of unique and valuable genes through the process of inbreeding depression. Hence, it is essential to maintain a minimal degree of heterozygosity within the population of each silkworm strain, especially in the traditional geographic strains, to avoid such loss. As a result, accurate estimation of genetic diversity is becoming more important in silkworm genetic resources conservation. Application of molecular markers help estimate genetic diversity much more accurately than that of morphological traits. Since a minimal amount of heterozygosity in each silkworm strain is essential for better conservation by avoiding inbreeding depression, this article overviews both theoretical and practical importance of heterozygosity together with impacts of inbreeding depression and the merits and demerits of neutral molecular markers for measurements of both heterozygosity and inbreeding depression in the silkworm Bombyx mori

Genetic Characterization of Two Iranian Turkoman Horse Populations from Turkoman Sahra and Turkoman Jergelan Regions

This study compares diversity patterns of five microsatellite (SSR) markers in two Iranian native horse populations (Turkoman sahra and Turkoman Jergelan) to infer relationships between them and to compare levels of their polymorphism for use in conservation efforts. Two populations across microsatellite loci had significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Average number of alleles were 3.6 and 4 in Turkoman Jergelan and Turkoman sahra, respectively, varying from 3 (HMS1) in Turkoman Jergelan to 6 (ASB2) in Turkoman sahra. AHT4 locus was monomorph in two populations. Average observed and expected heterozygosity was 0.366 and 0.668 for Turkoman Jergelan and 0.316 and 0.685 for Turkoman sahra, respectively. The lower observed rather than expected heterozygosity confirms high inbreeding level in two populations. Estimates of Nei’s Genetic distance showed a low distance (0.0647) between two populations which may be caused by their common ancestor, genetic substructures and gene flow occurrence in Raz and Turkeman sahra regions

Network of Experts: Learning from Evolving Data Streams Through Network-Based Ensembles

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