Genic differentiation in natural populations of Indian Mus musculus


 

Principal Investigator : Rajesh K Anand

Collaborators
Satish M Totey
K V Bhat, NBPGR, New Delhi
P A Cazenave, Institut Pasteur, France

The project aims to analyze natural populations of Mus at genetic level. The main objectives of the project are i) the genetic characterization of species and subspecies of Indian wild mice, ii) establishment of new wild derived inbred strains and iii) susceptibility/ resistance of wild mice to infectious diseases.

Genetic characterization of Indian wild mice populations

During this period, a new category of highly polymorphic marker, microsatellites developed recently for purpose of gene mapping were tried for characterization of Indian Mus species. These markers have numerous advantages over biochemical or immunological markers. These are tandem repeats of simple sequence that occur abundantly and at random throughout most eukaryotic genomes. Since they are usually less then 100 bp long and are embedded in DNA with unique sequence, they can be amplified in vitro using the PCR. They are easy to characterize and display considerable polymorphism due to variation in the number of repeat units. This polymorphism is sufficiently stable to use in genetic analyses. Partial inbred wild house mice trapped earlier by NII’s Animal Facility from houses and shops of Indian locations of Jalandhar (JAL), Delhi (DEL), Ghaziabad (GHZ), Ranikhet (RK), Calcutta (CAL), Pachmarhi (PM), Coimbatore (CO) and Pune (PU) were used for the present study. The randomly bred aboriginal mice populations (M.terricolorIII, M.saxicola and M.platythrix) were also used as representatives of Mus species. Inbred laboratory mice strains C57BL/6ByJ (BL/6J) and DBA/2J (D/2J) were used as controls. 5 Microsatellites (D1Mit 308, D4Mit 15, D4Mit 236,D5 Mit 79 and D6 Mit 102) randomly selected from a stock of 6000 markers developed at the White Head Institute/MIT Genome Center with an average spacing of less than 1 cM were used.

Microsatellite reaction was carried out in a total of 20 ml volume containing DNA template, PCR buffer, H2O MgCl2 dNTP’s, forward and reverse primers with Taq polymerase (Gibco). The reaction mixture was heat denatured at 95°C for 2 minutes. Various conditions of amplifications were tried but the best amplification was carried out for 35 cycles of denaturation (94°C, 45 sec.), annealing (57°, 45 Sec) extension (72°C, 1 minute) and final extension (72°C, 6 minutes) by using Perkin Elmer Thermal Cycler (DNA thermal cycler 480). 20 ul of amplified PCR products was loaded on 2% Agarose gel and electrophoresed at 100 V for 2-3 hour. The allele size of the microsatellite was calculated by comparing the fragment size with DNA marker (X 174 digested with Hae III (BRL). Various parameters of genetic diversity within and among the wild mice populations were statistically analyzed by using POPGEN 32 Software. To estimate the phylogenetic relationships PHYLIP package (version 3.572) was used for preparing gene frequencies matrix. 100 replicates of the original data set were constructed by bootstrap resampling which were analyzed by maximum likelihood procedure using CONTML package. CONSENSE was used to generate a consensus tree. As far as polymorphism (% P) is concerned, Indian Mus musculus populations from Coimbatore (CO) and Ranikhet (RK) showed 100 % polymorphism at all the microsatellite loci tested followed by Delhi (DEL) and Ghaziabad (GHZ) mice with 80% polymorphism and 40% in Pachmarhi (PM) and Pune (PU) mice. The other populations of Indian Mus species as well as control inbred mice showed 0% polymorphism indicating no variability in their genome with a homogeneous genetic makeup. All Indian Mus musculus populations had a higher value of Shannon’s informative index (I) meaning there was high level of allele sharing. The maximum allele sharing (1.09) were seen in Ranikhet (RK) population followed by Delhi (DEL) (0.80). The lowest value was observed in Pune (PU) (0.32). In contrast other Indian Mus species and controls had I=0.00 indicating uniform population without allele sharing. A maximum of 9 alleles were seen in Pachmarhi (PM) at D6Mit 102 locus whereas other loci produced 3-5 alleles. The allelic profiles within the population seemed to be population specific. Majority of these mice had homozygous genotype; few mice were seen with co- dominant expression of 2 alleles. Some populations showed null allele, which could be due to mutations in the flanking region. Some of the amplification reaction showed shadow bands due to heteroduplex events. High value of F(ST) [0.89] was seen with D4Mit15 followed by D5Mit79 [0.72]. D6Mit 102 had a low F(ST) value with a higher gene flow rate. Low level of heterozygosity seen in Pachmarhi (PM) and Pune (PU) mice could be linked with the increased likelihood of population bottlenecks and absence of gene flow due to geographical isolation. Nei’s genetic distance ranged from 0.00-4.11. The most divergent mice population was seen to be Coimbatore (CO). Populations from Jalandhar (JAL), Pachmarhi (PM), Calcutta (CAL) and Ghaziabad (GHZ) with a genetic distance of 3.78 were genetically quite apart. To check the strength of cluster analysis, parsimony was done. The most parsimonious tree differed to some extent as compared to cladogram. This tree needs to be reconfirmed by using at least 500-1000 times replicates and testing mice populations with another 10-20 microsatellites, which may provide a clear picture of their genetic relatedness.

Derivation of new Indian inbred strains of wild origin

During this period, Delhi (DEL) mice reached 25 generations of sibling mating followed by Pachmarhi (PM) mice which are currently at 19th generation. Gwalior (GW), Himachal (HP) and Bikaner (BIK) mice are slowly breeding. Inbreeding depression could be the only reason for this performance. In addition, random mated stocks of some localities were also raised for experimental studies.

Publications

Reviews/Proceedings

1.   *Singh M, Gulati N, Mandal A, Totey S, Anand R, Reddi H, Panda S, and Kumar V (2000) A tumor progression transgenic mouse model of hepatocellular carcinoma. In: Advances in animal virology (Eds: Jameel S and Villarreal LP), Science Publishers, Inc, Enfield, NH, USA 253-269 (*in press last year, since published).