New progress has been made in the "Research on the Conservation Genetics of Fish in the Tarim River" of the Heilongjiang Institute of Fishery Sciences

The "Genetic Research on Fish Protection in the Tarim River" jointly carried out by Cheng Lei of the Aquatic Genetics, Breeding and Biotechnology Research Laboratory of the Heilongjiang Institute of Fishery Sciences, Song Tan of the Fishery Ecological Environment Research Office and others has made new progress, and the related research results are "Endangered Schizothoracin Fish in the Tarim River Basin Are Threatened by Introgressive.
" Hybridization" is published in the JCR1 regional journal Biology (IF: 5.
168, https://doi.
org/10.
3390/biology11070981
).

 

Aspiorhynchus laticeps and Schizothorax biddulphi are listed as national and second-class protected wild animals respectively, and both belong to the same subfamily of carps, both distributed in the Tarim River system
.
Some scholars have speculated that the Schizothorax esocinus distributed in the Tarim River may be a hybrid of the flat-nosed fish and the Tarim split-bellied fish, but there is no direct genetic evidence
.
Previous genetic studies of fish populations in Xinjiang used mitochondrial DNA markers alone, and it was difficult to answer whether there was hybridization inflection
between species due to the characteristics of mitochondrial DNA maternal inheritance 。 The transcriptional spacer region 2 (internal transcribed spacers 2, ITS2) has the characteristics of multi-copy coevolution and biparental inheritance, and this study combines morphological and mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b (Cytochrome b, Cytb) gene sequencing and ITS2 genotyping, and the results show that the flat-billed schizophthalis fish is a hybrid product between the species of flatnose fish and Tarim cleft belly fish.
Heterozygous ITS2 genotype and mitochondrial haplotype of flatnose fish were also detected in some samples morphologically identified as Tarim schizophthalmia, and bidirectional hybridization invonation may have been observed in some samples of Tarim schizophthalmia
.

 

Interspecific hybridization may play a positive role in ecological diversity and species evolution, but it seriously threatens the survival of endangered species and the integrity of gene banks, and the scientific assessment and management of the risk of hybridization inflappy of flatnose fish and Tarim split-belly fish is of great significance for the protection and proliferation of
rare and endangered fish.