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Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene

Trade in ivory from extant elephant species namely Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is regulated internationally, while the trade in ivory from extinct species of Elephantidae, including woolly mammoth, i...

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Autores principales: Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba, Lan, Tian Ming, Ma, Yue, Dinh, Thi Dao, Wang, Zhen, Dahmer, Thomas D., Chun Xu, Yan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6906310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31827140
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55094-x
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author Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba
Lan, Tian Ming
Ma, Yue
Dinh, Thi Dao
Wang, Zhen
Dahmer, Thomas D.
Chun Xu, Yan
author_facet Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba
Lan, Tian Ming
Ma, Yue
Dinh, Thi Dao
Wang, Zhen
Dahmer, Thomas D.
Chun Xu, Yan
author_sort Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba
collection PubMed
description Trade in ivory from extant elephant species namely Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is regulated internationally, while the trade in ivory from extinct species of Elephantidae, including woolly mammoth, is unregulated. This distinction creates opportunity for laundering and trading elephant ivory as mammoth ivory. The existing morphological and molecular genetics methods do not reliably distinguish the source of ivory items that lack clear identification characteristics or for which the quality of extracted DNA cannot support amplification of large gene fragments. We present a PCR-sequencing method based on 116 bp target sequence of the cytochrome b gene to specifically amplify elephantid DNA while simultaneously excluding non-elephantid species and ivory substitutes, and while avoiding contamination by human DNA. The partial Cytochrome b gene sequence enabled accurate association of ivory samples with their species of origin for all three extant elephants and from mammoth. The detection limit of the PCR system was as low as 10 copy numbers of target DNA. The amplification and sequencing success reached 96.7% for woolly mammoth ivory and 100% for African savanna elephant and African forest elephant ivory. This is the first validated method for distinguishing elephant from mammoth ivory and it provides forensic support for investigation of ivory laundering cases.
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spelling pubmed-69063102019-12-13 Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba Lan, Tian Ming Ma, Yue Dinh, Thi Dao Wang, Zhen Dahmer, Thomas D. Chun Xu, Yan Sci Rep Article Trade in ivory from extant elephant species namely Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is regulated internationally, while the trade in ivory from extinct species of Elephantidae, including woolly mammoth, is unregulated. This distinction creates opportunity for laundering and trading elephant ivory as mammoth ivory. The existing morphological and molecular genetics methods do not reliably distinguish the source of ivory items that lack clear identification characteristics or for which the quality of extracted DNA cannot support amplification of large gene fragments. We present a PCR-sequencing method based on 116 bp target sequence of the cytochrome b gene to specifically amplify elephantid DNA while simultaneously excluding non-elephantid species and ivory substitutes, and while avoiding contamination by human DNA. The partial Cytochrome b gene sequence enabled accurate association of ivory samples with their species of origin for all three extant elephants and from mammoth. The detection limit of the PCR system was as low as 10 copy numbers of target DNA. The amplification and sequencing success reached 96.7% for woolly mammoth ivory and 100% for African savanna elephant and African forest elephant ivory. This is the first validated method for distinguishing elephant from mammoth ivory and it provides forensic support for investigation of ivory laundering cases. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-12-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6906310/ /pubmed/31827140 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55094-x Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Ngatia, Jacob Njaramba
Lan, Tian Ming
Ma, Yue
Dinh, Thi Dao
Wang, Zhen
Dahmer, Thomas D.
Chun Xu, Yan
Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title_full Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title_fullStr Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title_full_unstemmed Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title_short Distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
title_sort distinguishing extant elephants ivory from mammoth ivory using a short sequence of cytochrome b gene
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6906310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31827140
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55094-x
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