Investigating the genetic origin of awassi sheep in türki̇ye,palestine, jordan and saudi arabia based on sequencing of mtDNA D-loop regionfa

Awassi is a combined sheep breed, bred for meat, milk and wool production andis well adapted to unfavourable environmental conditions. It is widely bred in southernTürkiye, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. Due to many factors such assevere drought, disease, climate change, intensive selection and crossbreeding, thegenetic diversity and biological richness of Awassi sheep reared in Fertile Crescentregion has been severely reduced. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify thesebreeds, to determine their phylogenetic relationships and to protect them accordingly.In this thesis, the mtDNA D-loop region of Awassi sheep reared in Türkiye,Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia was sequenced, information about domesticationprocesses and haplogroups were obtained and phylogenetic analyses were performed byrevealing genetic similarities/differences. For this purpose, a total of 300 sheep(n=75x4) were sampled, the control region (D-loop region) of mtDNA was amplified byPCR and then sequenced. As a result of the analysis, a total of 34 different polymorphicregions and 67 different haplotypes were detected in the studied populations. When allpopulations were considered together, haplotype diversity and nucleotide diversity werecalculated as 0.968±0.006 and 0.01656, respectively. Among the populations studied,the most genetically distant populations were the Turkish and Palestinian populationsand the genetic distance between these two populations was estimated as 0.022. Allreference haplogroups were detected in the studied populations and haplogroup B wasfound to be dominant (37%)