CYTOCHROME OXIDASE SUBUNIT 1 (COI) GENE BASED PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF MAHSEER (TOR PUTITORA) OF PAKISTAN

Mahseer (Tor putitora) is a migratory freshwater fish inhabiting warm water rivers/streams which are distributed throughout South and South East Asia. The extreme inter-species similarities resulted in confusing morphological features causing problem to identify individual species, in order to clear this ambiguity scientist used many molecular markers including SSR, RAPD, RFLP and AFLP etc. However, due to problems of reproducibility and result interpretation with these markers scientists switched to new dimension of DNA barcoding using cytochrome oxidase C subunit 1 (CO1), a mitochondrial gene sequence analysis. Samples of Tor putitora were collected from different rivers of Pakistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir. The mitochondrial CO1 gene was amplified using gene specific primers. The PCR product was sequenced using Sanger sequencing method and phylogeneticanalysis wasdone utilizing the variant found in COI gene of Mahseers obtained from different water sources. The COI gene sequence not only confirms the species but also separate the populations of species.