Preliminary Genetic Analysis on Sea Cucumber From Sampadi Island, Sarawak

• Main Author: Nur Natasya, binti Ab Halim
• Format: E-LPTA
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2014
• Subjects: GE Environmental Sciences
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/8274/1/Preliminary%20Genetic%20Analysis%20of%20Sea%20Cucumber%20From%20Sampadi%20Island%2C%20Sarawak%2824pgs%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/8274/2/Preliminary%20Genetic%20Analysis%20of%20Sea%20Cucumber%20From%20Sampadi%20Island%2C%20Sarawak.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/8274/

Sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) are also known as Holothuroids or Holothurians which play important role in coral reef ecosystem. They are well known as a medicinal properties and as a food source. A few molecular studies had been carried out in Malaysia mainly using 16S rRNA gene and COI gene to study molecular phylogeny of Holothuroidea. However, there is no study conducted on Holothuria from Sarawak. Therefore, this study is to sequence COI gene from Holothuria of Sampadi Island and to assess genetic variation between individuals and infer molecular phylogeny of Holothuria. A total of 406 bp of COI gene sequences were obtained from H. leucospilota in this study. Genetic divergence of 1.1% to 2.8% was recorded among H. leucospilota samples from this study and other H. leucospilota sequence data from Genbank thus indicating intraspecific variations between H. leucospilota. Phylogenetic trees constructed using Neighbour Joining (NJ) and Maximum Parsimony (MP) showed monophyletic of the H. leucospilota as they grouped together into a single clade. Limited samples were used in this study. Therefore, more samples from different locations should be used for future work.