Transferrin polymorphism in Amazon turtle (Podocnemis expansa) stocks

The monotony of transferrin and esterase electrophoretic patterns in pirarucu, Arapaima gigas (Schinz, 1822) from Santa Cruz Lake, Tefé River, Amazonas, Brazil

“…Electrophoretic migrations both for transferrin and esterases took place towards the anode. Gel staining for transferrin was done with 1% amido black for 5 min (Jamieson and Turner, 1978) and its destaining lasted for nearly 15 h (Teixeira et al, 1996). α-Naphthyl acetate was used as the substrate for esterase staining according to the method described by Shaw and Prasad (1970), whereas the 4-methyl umbelliferyl acetate was the substrate for esterase-D staining according to the method described by Hopkinson et al (1973).…”

“…On account of demonstrating a high evolutionary change rate in its molecular structure and a high degree of genetic polymorphism in many vertebrate species, the Tf gene locus has been very helpful in studies regarding the characterization of population genetic structure for several commercial fish species, mainly the marine ones (Jamieson and Turner, 1978;Jamieson and Birley, 1989). The distributions of genotypes and alleles at that locus have already provided some information on the population genetic structure of Amazonian aquatic species, such as tambaqui, Colossoma macropomum, in a native population (Teixeira and Jamieson, 1985) and hatchery stocks (Calcagnotto and Toledo-Filho, 2000), two jaraqui species, Semaprochilodus taeniurus and S. insignis (Teixeira et al, 1990), one turtle species, Podocnemis expansa (Teixeira et al, 1996), and one pescada species, Plagioscion squamosissimus (Teixeira et al, 2002). However, at the moment there is no available information on electrophoretic Tf locus genotypes, applied to the study of pirarucu and its natural stocks.…”