Evaluation of Molecular Genetic Diversity and DNA Barcoding of Rita gogra (Family Bagridae) from Narmada River Revealed through Mitochondrial COX1 Gene Sequencing

Abstract

Background: Since fish have a great deal of variation and phenotypic flexibility, it can occasionally be challenging to identify them just based on morphological features; therefore, various molecular markers are very reliable tools to identify genetic divergence and differentiations with and between populations.Materials and Methods: The morphological characteristics allowed us to identify the fish as a bagrid catfish, Rita gogra (Sykes 1839), from the Narmada River. Fresh DNA barcode information was sent to the Barcode of Life, and mitochondrial COX1 gene sequences were sent to GenBank, NCBI, USA, with a length of 615 bp (accessions MF687949, MF687950, MH427908, MH427909, and MH427910).Results: Barcoded and NCBI-created data showed the highest conserved regions for Rita gogra because it gave more than 99% hit similarities and differentiated it from neighboring species like Rita rita. The average gene polymorphism, as haplotype gene diversity, was 0.52381, and nucleotide diversity was 0.00473 among three populations, indicating good gene diversity of Rita gogra in the Narmada River. Genetic differentiation (Gst) was 0.00826, which indicates that the highest genetic variation is within populations of Hoshangabad and Mandleshwar, and 0.00% was found between Hoshangabad and Maheshwar populations. These results suggest that genetic differentiation among populations of R. gogra is impeded by high gene flow.Conclusion: This research evaluated the efficacy of COX1 for genetic differentiation and the development of a barcode for discriminating fish species, encouraging the global effort to build a complete library of COX1 sequences associated with specific specimens, which has just started.

Keywords: Gene diversity; Genetic differentiation; Haplotype diversity; Narmada River; Nucleotide diversity