DNA Mini-Barcoding: An Approach for Forensic Identification of Some Endangered Indian Snake Species

• NCJ Number: 234611
• Journal: Forensic Science International: Genetics Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2011 Pages: 181-184
• Author(s): Bhawna Dubey; P.R. Meganathan; Ikramul Haque
• Date Published: June 2011
• Length: 4 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study used DNA mini-barcoding as a way to identify endangered snake species from India that are being illegally hunted and traded.

Abstract

The study found that DNA mini-barcodes recovered from bp fragment amplicons enabled the identification of snake species by retrieving the sequences available in public databases. The intent of the study was to determine the effectiveness of DNA mini-barcoding as a way to identify endangered snake species from India that are being illegally hunted and traded. Cytochrome Oxidase I gene sequences of all available snake species were retrieved from GenBank, a public database, and aligned using MEGA 3.1 software resulting in two sets of novel primers. The DNA mini-barcodes recovered from the amplicons in these datasets had similarity scores ranging from 98 to 100 percent, signifying the consistency of mini-barcodes in snake species identification. These results confirm the effectiveness of using DNA mini-barcodes in forensic identification cases where morphological features of seized samples are often missing. Tables, figure, and references