Abstract
The objective of the present study was to determine the polymorphism in the leptin (LEP) and prolactin (PRL) genes in Herri (n=35) sheep breed of Saudi Arabia. No single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was detected in the 156-bp PCR amplicon of PRL exon 3 region. The aligned DNA sequences of the 471-bp fragment of LEP exon 3 showed four non-synonymous SNPs and two synonymous SNPs. The non-synonymous SNPs were found at positions 170 (GGG/AGG-transition), 248 (CTG/CCG-transition), 286 (GTG/TTG-transversion) and 332 (CGG/CAG-transition). The two synonymous SNPs were detected at positions 213 (ACC/GCC transition) and 216 (CCA/CCG transition). The SNP (C) at position 248 was specific to Herri sheep. These sequences were deposited into the GenBank with accession nos. KJ924981-KJ924986.
Five genotypes were recognized as homozygotes (01-05) and two were heterozygotes (06 and 07). The most frequent LEP genotype 05 (37%) was also found to be the most common genotype in GenBank database. The present study provided basic information to understand the genetic diversity of Herri sheep breed of Saudi Arabia.