Genetic studies of water Buffalo blood markers. II: Carbonic anhydrase, esterase D, malate dehydrogenase, and malic enzyme

To determine the genetic diversity of water buffaloes Bubalus bubalis, which underpins their genetic well-being over time, as well as efforts to improve their meat and milk yields, it is necessary first to estimate the genetic distances within and between populations of various geographical locations. Electrophoretic techniques provide the means to do this by estimating gene frequencies for polymorphic genetic markers. Cellulose acetate electrophoresis, the technique employed in this study, allows rapid and efficient screening for the presence of polymorphism in an enzyme (Tan et al., 1989). Makaveev (1978) has shown, using starch gel electrophoresis and family studies, that water buffalo malate dehydrogenase is encoded by a locus with two codominant alleles, M D H A and M D H B. Iorio and Annunziata (1986), using cellulose acetate electrophoresis, reported that the three water buffalo carbonic anhydrase phenotypes they observed were encoded by codominant alleles, CA F and CA s, but no family study was done to confirm this interpretation. Esterase D of water buffaloes was reported by Tan et al. (1980) to be polymorphic and encoded by two codominant alleles, E S D V and E S D s, on starch gel electrophoresis but no family data were available. In this paper family studies on animals with known pedigrees were conducted to ascertain whether the polymorphic genetic markers that we