GENETIC DIVERSITY IN POPULATIONS OF SEPIELLA JAPONICA BASED ON THE MITOCHONDRIAL DNA SEQUENCE ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT: Part of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified with PCR and sequenced for 57 individuals from5 populations of common Chinese cuttlefish Sepiella japonica : three from the South China Sea, onefrom East China Sea and one from Nagasaki water (Japan). The result showed that a total of 5 nucleotidepositions were found to have insertions/deletions among these individuals, and 13 positions wereexamined to be variable in all the sequences, which ranged from 494 to 509 base pairs. All of theindividuals were grouped into 7 haplotypes (h1–h7). The individuals from Nagasaki belonged to h1and the h3 haplotype was found only in the coastal waters of China. A ↔G transition in Nucleotide 255was suggested to be taken as a kind of genetic marker to identify the populations distributed in East-South China Sea and the Nagasaki water of Japan. INTRODUCTION Cephalopods are a potentially valuable proteinresource and highly promising animals formariculture because of such characters as highnutritional qualities, short life span and extremelyrapid growth (Nesis, 1987). China is one of themajor countries of cephalopod fisheries. It boastsrich species resources: 101 species belonging to 6orders, 21 families and 45 genera (Huang, 1994)have been discovered.