Rabbit mitochondrial DNA: preliminary comparison between some domestic and wild animals (original) (raw)

The map of the restriction endonuclease cleavage sites of rabbit mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been established : 41 sites were mapped using 13 enzymes. This genome, although rather large for a mammalian mtDNA (17 300 bp), is organized in the typical vertebrate fashion. For each of 6 wild and 5 domestic rabbits belonging respectively to the subspecies Oryctolagus cuniculus algirus and Oryctolagus cuniculus cuniculus, mtDNA molecules are heterogeneous in size. The length variations of about 100 bp have been assigned to the main non coding region of the genome. Very curiously, according to these preliminary results the mtDNAs of the two subspecies exhibit similar restriction patterns. However, 2 variants were found among the animals examined, one in each population.