Identificação de Espécies de Animais Silvestres por Meio de Sequências Mitocondriais Utilizados no Combate aos Crimes Contra a Fauna – Mato Grosso – Brasil

Abstract

The Brazil has an unquestionable importance in the setting of global biodiversity which makes it one of the countries most targeted to this which is the third largest illicit trade of the world, the trafficking of wild animals. Even with the recognition of technique as important tool in identifying, still hangs a discussion about what the best segment of DNA to be used (Cytb or IOC) and if these are effective for degraded samples, as is the case of forensic samples. Objective was to contribute to the dissolution of the questioning and deposit in the GenBank database of mitochondrial DNA sequences generated. The samples were divided into two groups, calls to reference samples (collected animals of the Zoo of UFMT) and challenged samples (sent to Technical Scientific Police laboratory for species identification). After extraction, amplification and sequencing, the sequences were confronted with samples already deposited in GenBank. The best results were obtained for the shorter sequences of Cytb. In only 10% of species achieved success in sequencing the IOC segment. The resulting sequences of samples references, when faced with the sequences deposited in GenBank showed similarity between 100% 93.9%, with the exception of the sample Leopardus pardalis which resulted in 91.9% of similarity with the species Prionailurus bengalensis. For the resulting sequences of samples questioned obtained similarity index greater than 97% of species of hydrochaeris Hydrochoerus, Tapirus terrestris and Euprhactus sexcinctus. For the obtained sequences of species, Pecari tajacu, Rhynchotus rufescens, Leptotila verreauxi and Tupinambis teguixin, the index of similarity was of 94.3% with Pecari tajacu, 96.5% with Ramphasto toco, 96.1% with Amazona guildingii and 98.3% with the species Tupinambis merianae, respectively. Thus this work contributed to standardize and show the efficiency of the technique and the need to carry out a major project of sequencing of the entire fauna Silvestre Brazilian to make them available in public databases.