Abstract
Arbi is one of the main local goat breeds in Tunisia, representing an important economic resource in arid and hot areas where cattle and sheep cannot thrive successfully. In the current work, we have characterized the mitochondrial diversity of 26 Arbi goats by partially sequencing the mitochondrial D-loop region. These sequences plus 10 retrieved from GenBank were analyzed with the DnaSP v.5.10.1, evidencing the existence of 12 different haplotypes. Nucleotide and haplotype diversities were 0.02 and 0.96. Moreover, median-joining network analysis showed that all D-loop sequences from Arbi goats correspond to haplogroup A and that in general they do not cluster with sequences from other goat breeds. The high diversity that has been observed in North African goats is compatible with the maritime diffusion of the Neolithic package 10,000–7000 YBP. Moreover, there are evidences that local Tunisian breeds have been extensively crossed with highly productive transboundary breeds in order to improve meat and milk yields. These uncontrolled crossing practices may lead to the loss of alleles that play key roles in the adaptation of Tunisian local breeds to a harsh environment.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Amills M, Ramırez O, Tomas A, Badaoui B, Marmi J, Acosta J, Sanchez A, Capote J (2009) Mitochondrial DNA diversity and origins of South and Central American goats. Anim Genet 40:315–322
Bandelt HJ (2007) Network 4.2.0.1. User Guide. Fluxus Technology Ltd, Suffolk, UK, pp 3–35
Bandelt HJ, Forster P, Rohl A (1999) Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. Mol Biol Evol 16:37–48
Benjelloun B, Pompanon F, Ben Bati M, Chentouf M, Ibnelbachyr M, El Amiri B, Rioux D, Boulanouar B, Taberlet P (2011) Mitochondrial DNA polymorphism in Moroccan goats. Small Rumin Res 98:201–205
Blondier J, Aronson J (1999) Biology and Wildlife of the Mediterranean Region. Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp 31–50.
Corpet F (1988) Multiple sequence alignment with hierarchical clustering". Nucl Acids Res 22:10881–10890
Di Gaetano C, Cerutti N, Crobu F, Robino C, Inturri S, Gino S, Guarrera S, Underhill PA, King RJ, Romano V, Cali F, Gasparini M, Matullo G, Salerno A, Torre C, Piazza A (2009) Differential Greek and northern African migrations to Sicily are supported by genetic evidence from the Y chromosome. Eur J Hum Genet 17:91–99
Ferrando A, Manunza A, Jordana J, Capote J, Pons A, Pais J, Delgado T, Atoche P, Cabrera B, Martínez A, Landi V, Delgado JV, Argüello A, Vidal O, Lalueza-Fox C, Ramírez O, Amills M (2015) A mitochondrial analysis reveals distinct founder effect signatures in Canarian and Balearic goats. Anim Genet 46:452–456
Gaddour A, Najari S (2011) Efficacité zootechnique des génotypes caprins en Tunisie. Renc Rech Ruminants 18:419
Gaddour A, Najari S, Abdennebi M (2010) Amélioration de la productivité de la chèvre locale par le croisement en Tunisie. Renc Rech Ruminants 17:459
Gaddour A, Najari S, Aroum S, Abdennebi M (2013) Study of authentic cheeses manufactured from local goat milk in Tunisian arid land. Int J Curr Microbiol App Sci 2:315–317
Gaddour A, Najari S, Ferchichi A (2009) Milk production of caprine genotypes in arid land of southern Tunisia. Res J Dairy Sci 3:1–2.
Jemmali M, Villemot JM (1995) L'expérience tunisienne en matière de filière lait caprine: Le projet d'intensification de l'élevage caprin laitier dans les oasis tunisiennes (P.I.C.O.) (Coopération tuniso-française: OEP - UCARDEC). Bulletin de l'UCARDEC du premier trimestre 1995.
Librado P, Rozas J (2009) DnaSP v5: a software for comprehensive analysis of DNA polymorphisms data. Bioinformatics 25:1451–1452
Manunza A, Noce A, Serradilla JM, Goyache F, Martínez A, Capote J, Delgado JV, Jordana J, Muñoz E, Molina A, Landi V, Pons A, Balteanu V, Traoré A, Vidilla M, Sánchez-Rodríguez M, Sànchez A, Cardoso TF, Amills M (2016) A genome-wide perspective about the diversity and demographic history of seven Spanish goat breeds. Genet Sel Evol 48:52
Martínez A, Manunza A, Delgado JV, Landi V, Adebambo A, Ismaila M, Capote J, El Ouni M, Elbeltagy A, Abushady AM, Galal S, Ferrando A, Gómez M, Pons A, Badaoui B, Jordana J, Vidal O, Amills M (2016) Detecting the existence of gene flow between Spanish and North African goats through a coalescent approach. Sci Rep 6:38935
Naderi S, Rezaei HR, Taberlet P, Zundel S, Rafat SA, Naghash HR, El-Barody AA, Ertugrul O, Pompanon F (2007) Large-Scale Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Domestic Goat Reveals Six Haplogroups with High Diversity. PLoS ONE 2:10
Naderi S, Rezaei HR, Pompanon F, Blum MG, Negrini R, Naghash HR, Balkiz O, Mashkour M, Gaggiotti OE, Ajmone-Marsan P, Kence A, Vigne JD, Taberlet P (2008) The goat domestication process inferred from large-scale mitochondrial DNA analysis of wild and domestic individuals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:17659–17664
Nafti M, Khaldi Z, Rekik B, Ben Gara A (2009) Biodiversity in goats in the Tunisian oasis. LRRD 21:178
Nafti M, Khlady Z, Haddad B (2016) Genetic relationships and structure among goat populations from southern Tunisia assessed using microsatellites. Journal of New Sciences 27:1488–1497
Pereira F, Queirós S, Gusmão L, Nijman IJ, Cuppen E, Lenstra JA, Econogene Consortium, Davis SJ, Nejmeddine F, Amorim A (2009) Tracing the history of goat pastoralism: new clues from mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA in North Africa. Mol Biol Evol 26:2765–2773
Taberlet P, Coissac E, Pansu J, Pompanon F (2011) Conservation genetics of cattle, sheep, and goats. C R Biol 334:247–254
Tamura K, Stecher G, Peterson D, Filipski A, Kumar S (2013) MEGA6: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 6.0. Mol Biol Evol 30:2725–2729
Vacca GM, Daga C, Pazzola M, Carcangiu V, Dettori ML, Cozzi MC (2010) D-loop sequence mitochondrial DNA variability of Sarda goat and other goat breeds and populations reared in the Mediterranean area. J Anim Breed Genet 127:352–360
Zeder MA (2008) Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:11597–11604
Funding
This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Tunisia. We also acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the grant AGL2016-76108-R and the “Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D” 2016–2019 (SEV‐2015‐0533). This research was also supported by the CERCA Programme of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
MA conceived and designed the experiments, YR and AN performed the experiments.YR analyzed the data. YR, MA wrote the paper. All authors read and critically revised the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ressaissi, Y., Amills, M., Noce, A. et al. Characterizing the Mitochondrial Diversity of Arbi Goats from Tunisia. Biochem Genet 59, 1225–1232 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-021-10058-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-021-10058-7