Parentage Testing in Different Breeds of Dogs Using Microsatellite Markers

A total of 45 blood samples from progeny and the putative parents were tested for parentage analysis using a panel of microsatellite markers (short tandem repeats). Six breeds of dogs were represented viz. German shepherd, Dalmatian, Labrador, Great Dane, Boxer and Lhasa Apso in this study for genotype analysis. Ten different microsatellite marker loci were amplified by multiplex PCR. The multiplex PCR products were run in genetic analyzer. The data were analyzed using gene mapper software to measure the allele size. Such measured allele size was compared to determine whether there are matches between the progeny and the putative parents. In conclusion, short tandem repeats uniformly distributed in the genome was found to be highly polymorphic and can be used as molecular tool for parentage testing in dogs of different breeds.