DNA Molecule :: Biology, The Mitochondrial Cyt B

Haruan Channa striatus is in great demand in the Malaysian domestic fish market. Therefore, detailed knowledge of the genetic diversity and population genetics of Haruan C. striatus are needed for sound management, conservation, stock identification and successful fishing of the species. Haruan, the local name for the snakehead Channa striatus is an obligate freshwater fish of the family Channidae, which has important economic value as food fish, and has pharmacological properties as well as medicinal value (Mat Jais, 1991, 2007a, 2007b; Rahim et al., 2009; Jamaluddin et al., 2011). Haruan C. striatus can be morphologically distinguished based on coloration, meristics and morphometrics (Mat Jais, 1991; Rahim et al., 2009), as well as the distribution of scales on the underside of the lower jaw, and the morphology of the suprabranchial organs and a sharp pointed ridge at the mid-ventral part of isthmus (Vishwanath and Geetakymari, 2009). The wild species found in small rivers, lakes, pools and shallow water bodies where agro-chemicals are applied in their natural habitats can survive in harsh environments with low dissolved oxygen and high ammonia (Rahim et al., 2009; Jamaluddin, 2011). Haruan C. striatus in particular has a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 42, with a karyotype composed of 6 metacentric, 2 acrocentric and 34 telocentric chromosomes, NF=50, without heteromorphic sex chromosomes (Supiwong et al., 2009). The mitochondrial cyt b is one of the most important proteins encoding genes on the heavy strand of the mtDNA molecule, which has been widely used in molecular marker techniques for many applications to access intra- or interspecies genetic diversity, genetic variation, phylogeography, species and hybrid identification, phylogeny in numerous species and genera, population genetic structure, conservation and demographic history (Hsu et al., 2009; Li et al., 2009, Ma et al., 2010; Thangaraj and Lipton, 2010). Due to the potential of Haruan C. striatus previous studies have analyzed the genetics of this species at the morphological, biological, diet, physiological, biochemical composition, ecological and chromosomal level for breeding programs and medical and pharmaceutical activities for anti-microbial, antiinflammatory, cell proliferation, induction of platelet aggregation and anti-nociceptive properties (Mat Jais, 2007b; Rahim et al., 2009; Supiwong et al., 2009; Dahlan-Daud et al., 2010; Jamaluddin et al., 2011). In recent years, preliminary analysis of Haruan C. striatus populations has been examined based on different molecular markers, such as analysis of mitochondrial mtDNA (Abol-Munafi, 2007; Lakra et al., 2010; Jamaluddin et al., 2011), randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD; Ambak et al., 2006) and allozyme markers (Hara et al., 1998). Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) has been proven to be a successful method in studying the population genetic structure and differentiation of many fish, such as skipjack tuna