DNA Fingerprinting of Cyprinid Fish Species of Iraqi Inland Waters : The First Study on Fish Molecular Ecology of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia was the cradle of life. As It characterized with ecosystem diversity, it has specific diversity of fishes specially those they belong to family Cyprinidae. All the previous studies to discriminate among Cyprinidae members particularly the most similar species of genus Barbus followed traditional methods such as biometry, Osteology and protein electrophoresis. The present study included the most common six Barbus species belong to the subfamily Cyprininae: B. xanthopterus, B. kersin, B. barbulus, B. grypus, B. Sharpeyi, B. luteus and Cyprinus carpio as a close relative from other genus belong to the same subfamily in addition to Aspius vorax as another species belong to sister subfamily Leuciscinae. This study is the first on DNA fingerprints of Mesopotamian cyprinid fishes using RAPD-PCR technique. It efficiently differentiates among these eight species, genetic diversity and phylogenetic tree. MtDNA cytb and 16SrRNA genes were used to confirm their classification to the genus and subfamily levels. One of the main goals of this work was to put DNA dependant Identity profile for the Mesopotamian cyprinid fish species and put baseline of molecular studies on Iraqi fishes