A DNA Probe That Yields Highly Informative DNA Fingerprints for the Threespine Stickleback

Abstract

To assess the utility of DNA probes for paternity and maternity analysis in threespine sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus, we tested the bacteriophage genome M13 and the locus-specific VNTR (variable number of tandem repeats) probes pYNZ37.3, pYNZ22, pYNZ32, and pYNZl32, which are of human origin. Using DNA from threespine sticklebacks randomly collected, and hence presumably unrelated, we obtained informative DNA fingerprints (i.e., with clearly defined bands) only with M13 and pYNZl32. We examined the band-sharing indices (BSIs; i.e., fraction of bands shared by two individuals) obtained with these two probes. Digestion with Alu I, Hae III, or Msp I, yielded BSIs between 0.42 and 0.53 for M13 and between 0.18 and 0.23 for pYNZ132. Using pYNZ132, we analyzed the BSIs of 1 male and 10 randomly chosen fry of its brood. Based on the average BSI for unrelated individuals (i.e., the probability of sharing a band with an unrelated individual), we calculated the probabilities of incorrect paternity assignment. The extremely low band-sharing indices obtained with pYNZ132 make this probe ideal for conducting mating studies with three-spine sticklebacks.