INTRASPECIFIC GENETIC VARIATION OF Trichogaster fasciatus BLOCH & SCHNEIDER, 1801 (OSPHRONEMIDAE) ASSESSED BY RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD) ANALYSIS

Merina Das; M.M.Goswami

Volume : V, Issue : IV, April - 2016

INTRASPECIFIC GENETIC VARIATION OF Trichogaster fasciatus BLOCH & SCHNEIDER, 1801 (OSPHRONEMIDAE) ASSESSED BY RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD) ANALYSIS

Merina Das, M. M. Goswami

Abstract :

The egg shaped with orange and bluish bars freshwater fish Trichogaster fasciatus is a member of family Osphronemidae and is commonly known as striped or banded gourami. It is one of the popular fish among aquaculturist due to its ornamental value and has great utility to relieve pain from spider bite. An unique feature of this fish is it can spit on insect to ing them to surface level. However to enhance its aquaculture potentiality and to maintain a vigorous gene pool, detailed knowledge is required on the population structure of Trichogaster. This study was carried out by using RAPD markers to investigate morphological and molecular aspect of a population of Trichogaster fasciatus collected from different freshwater bodies of Assam about 100–450 km away from each other. A total of 36 amplified bands were produced using five decamer primers having arbitrary nucleotide sequence. The results reveal that 22 polymorphic bands and 14 monomorphic bands were produced which shows 65.32 % of polymorphism and 34.64% of monomorphism. Based on the genetic distance UPGMA dendogram was constructed which revealed the formation of three main clusters signifying comparatively higher level of genetic variations in the studied T. fasciatus populations in Assam. Once the population structure is known, restoration of the ornamental fish population can be done. Thus the present study may serve as a prospect for examinations of genetic variations within the populations of fishes which are ornamentally significant and the possible use of DNA markers in future may pave path for ornamental fish molecular biological research.