Variation of Mitochondrial DNA Among domestic Fowls and Red jungle Fowl

Eleven restriction endonucleases were employed to assay the variation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) among 9 domestic fowls (three of each Chahua breed,Nixi breed and Dali yangbi yellow breed) and 1 red jungle fowl.About 40 fragments were scored in each individual averagely.Three mtDNA variants were discovered,namely,StuⅠ-B,ScaⅠ-B and EcoRⅠ-B.The patterns of StuⅠ-B and ScaⅠ-B were reported firstly,and only occurred in the red jungle fowl.EcoRⅠ-B was specialized in Dali Yangbi breed.In the other hand,Chahua and Nixi breeds share the identical restriction patterns.Based on the shared fragments,the genetic distances among breeds which have different mtDNA haplotypes were calculated.The distance between the red jungle fowl and Chahua-Nixi is 0.32%,that between the red jungle fowl and Dali Yangbi yellow fowl is 0.48%,These results imply that the red jungle fowl experimented may be out of a special subpopulation,which deserves more attention as well as protection.