Authors Contact

| Nwamba Helen Ogochukwu | Anukwu John Uchenna * | and | Chiaha Ijeoma Emiliana |

Affiliation.

Department of Applied Biology and Biotechnology | Enugu State University of Science and Technology | South Eastern Nigeria

This article is made freely available as part of this journal's Open Access: ID Anukwu–Ref7-3-16ajiras250323 |

ABSTRACT

Background: The continuous decline in biodiversity is a subject of concern among the scientific community. This decline is common in the fish population. Although taxonomy has been an age-long field of science, there are still undiscovered members of species and new species are waiting to be uncovered. The failure of traditional taxonomic method to address this issue has resulted in the adoption of a molecular approach-DNA barcoding. It was proposed that DNA barcoding using mitochondrion cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene has the capability to serve as a barcode for fishes. Objectives: The aim of this study was to use DNA barcoding in the identification of fish species in Nike Lake, Enugu State. Materials and methods: The DNA samples from 6 fishes collected from four Nike Lake in Enugu State respectively were isolated, amplified and sequenced. Result: BLAST result shows correlation between the sequence queried and the biological sequences with the NCBI database. The names of the samples, percentage ID, predicted organisms and GenBank Accession numbers were clearly identified. A total of 12 sequences (all > 500 bp) belonging to 6 species, 5 genera and 5 families and 3 orders were validated and submitted to the NCBI database. Each nucleotide peak was represented by a single color with various percentage occurrences. None of the 6 original samples analyzed corresponded with the predicted organisms from NCBI database. Pairwise sequence alignment showed different consensus positions and 1 transversion mutation in Oreochromis aureus. There were no deletion and nonsense codons in all the amplified sequences. Conclusion: This work will facilitate more research in other keys areas such as identification of mislabeled fish products, illegal trading of endangered species and effective tracking of fish biodiversity.
Keywords: DNA barcoding, Nike lake, phylogenetic trees, Pairwise DNA alignment, substitution, insertion, mutation.