A DIVERGENT MITOCHONDRIAL CYTOCHROME-B SEQUENCE IN DOMESTIC SHEEP DOES NOT ORIGINATE FROM ARKAL (OVIS-VIGNEI ARKAL)

A 494 bp fragment from the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene of two dome stic sheep (Ovis aries) and one Arkal (Ovir vignei arkar) was cloned a nd sequenced. Two additional O. aries sequences determined by others w ere also included in the analyses. Pairwise nucleotide divergences bet ween three domestic sheep were 0% and 0.41 %, while a fourth O. aries sequence differed markedly (1.82% and 2.23%). The O. aries divergences calculated with the latter sequence approached the sequence differenc es between Arkal and the other domestic sheep sequences (2.83 and 3.04 %), but the divergence between Arkal and this sequence was even highe r (4.45%). In addition, nucleotides observed at 13 of the 24 variable positions in total were Arkal specific. These results show that Arkal mtDNA is not responsible for the observed high Cyt. b sequence diverge nce among O. aries and suggest that Arkal was not a direct maternal an cestor of domestic sheep.