Use of cytochrome oxidase 1 gene region: a molecular tool for the domestic and wildlife industry in Kenya

Authors

  • David Mbugua UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • C. N. Kimwele UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • J. O. Jung’a UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • E. Gatebe UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • F. Gakuya UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • M. J. Kinuthia UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • M. M. Mugambi UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
  • E. S. Kwamboka UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI Korea, Democratic People's Republic of

Keywords:

DNA SPECIES IDENTIFICATION, CO1, BOLD, PCR, NCBI, DNA BAR CODING, WILDLIFE, BUSH MEAT, MEAT SUBSTITUTION

Abstract

Illegal substitution of meat products by traders either as closely related domestic species or as bush meat is a common occurrence in various parts of Kenya. This has implications on biosafety, food safety and consumer confidence and subsequently the meat and meat products industry both locally and export. In recent times, use of molecular techniques have seen increased application in wildlife conservation through conservation genetics in areas such as population genetics, evolutionary genetics, molecular ecology and wildlife forensics. We used DNA of the Cytochrome C Oxidase 1 gene region as a bar-coding technique for species identification. The accuracy of CO1 as a marker was tested using five known samples of wildlife species.Retail meat product substitution and bushmeat prevalence was estimated from 99 unknown meat samples that were randomly collected from meat traders in Nakuru County. The study validated the use of CO1 marker for species identification and illustrated use of the marker in identification of unknown tissue samples collected from the market survey.

References

Altschul, S.T., Madden, A., Schäffer, J., Zhang, Z., Zhang, W., Miller, S., Lipman, D.J., 1997. Gapped BLAST and PSIBLAST: a new generation of protein database search programs, Nucleic Acids Res., 25 (17). pp. 3389–3402.

Arbele, E.D., Forrest, J.C., Gerrad, D.E., Mills, E.W., 2001. Principle of meat science. Kendal/Hunt publishing.

Baker, C.S., and S.R. Palumbi, Which whales are hunted—a molecular genetics approach to monitoring whaling.

Sci., 265 (5178) (1994), pp. 1538–1539.

Blaxter, M., 2003. Molecular sustematics: counting angels with DNA. Nature (London)., 421, 122-124.

Casiraghi, M., Labra, M., Ferri, E., Galimberti, A., De Mattia, F., 2010. DNA barcoding: a six-question tour to

improve users’ awareness about the method. Brief. Bioinformatics., 11, 440–453.

Eating the unknown., Born Free Foundation., 2004. A survey of meat sold in butcheries in informal settlements in

Nairobi.

Felsenstein, J., 1985. Confidence limits on phylogenies: An approach using the bootstrap. Evolut., 39, 783-791.

Hebert, P.D.N., 2005. DNA bar-coding Australia’s fish species. Phil.Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol Sci., 360, 1-11. Kress,

Ivanova, N.V, DeWaard, J.R., Hebert, P.D.N., 2006. An inexpensive,automation-friendly protocol for recovering

high-quality DNA. Molecular Ecol. Notes., 6, 998–1002.

Kang’ethe, E.K, Gathuma, J.M., Lindquist, K.J., 1986. Identification of species of origin of fresh cooked and canned

meat products using antisera to thermo stable muscle antigens by ouchterlory’s double diffusion test. J. sci.

food agr., 37, 157 – 164.

Karisa, B.K., Kimwele, C.N., Skilton, R.A., Jung’a, J.O., Hanoette, O., 2008. Estimating the prevalence of game meat

utilization in commercial outlets in Nairobi using cytochrome B sequences. Int. soc. Anim. Genet.

Kumar, U.S., Ratheesh, R.V., Thomas, G., George, S., 2012. Use of DNA barcoding in wildlife forensics: a study of

sambar deer (Rusa unicolor). Forest Sci. Technol., 8(4), 224-226.

Lorenzo, J.G., Jackson, W.E., Beck, J.C., Hanner, R., 2005. The problems and promise of DNA barcodes for species

diagnosis of primate biomaterials, Phil. Trans. R. Soc., B 360 (1462), pp. 1869–1877.

Marshall, E., 2005. Taxonomy. Will DNA barcodes breathe life into classification? Sci., (Washington D.C), 307, 1037.

Ministry of tourism., 2011. Kenya. Tourism performance overview. www.tourism.go.ke, accessed on 21/11/.

Rasmussen, R.S., Morrissey, M.T., 2008. DNA-based methods for the identification of commercial fish and seafood

species. Compr. Rev. Food Sci. Food Saf., 7, 280–95.

Ratnasingham, S.R., Herbert, D.N., 2007. BOLD: The Barcode of Life Data System (www.barcodinglife.org). Mol.

Eco. Notes., 7, 355-364.

Tamura, K., Nei, M., 1993. Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of

mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees. Mol. Biol. Evol., 10, 512-526.

Valentini, A., Pompanon, F., Taberlet, P., 2009. DNA barcoding for ecologists. Trends Ecol. Evolut., 24, 110–117.

Ward, R.D., Zemlak, T.S., Innes, B.H., Last, P.R., Valentini, A., Pompanon, F., Taberlet, P., 2009. DNA barcoding for

ecologists. Trends Ecol. Evolut., 24, 110–117.

Published

2014-03-15

How to Cite

Mbugua, D. ., N. Kimwele, C., O. Jung’a, J., Gatebe, E. ., Gakuya, F. ., J. Kinuthia, M., M. Mugambi, M., & S. Kwamboka, E. (2014). Use of cytochrome oxidase 1 gene region: a molecular tool for the domestic and wildlife industry in Kenya. Scientific Journal of Animal Science, 3(3), 87-94. Retrieved from https://sjournals.com/index.php/sjas/article/view/838

Issue

Section

Original Article