Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on January 24, 2008
Journal of Heredity 2008 99(2):187-192; doi:10.1093/jhered/esm107
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Brief Communications |
Sex Identification of Owls (Family Strigidae) Using Oligonucleotide Microarrays
From the Graduate Institute of Veterinary Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1 Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan (L. C. Wang and C. H. Wang); Taipei Zoo, Taipei, Taiwan (L. C. Wang, Chin, Huang, and Lee); the Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan (Severinghaus); the Scientific and Technical Research Center, Ministry Justice Investigation Bureau, Taipei, Taiwan (Chen and Pu); the Graduate Institute of Plant Science, National Pintung University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan (Liu); the Department of Hog Cholera, Animal Health Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Taipei, Taiwan (Pan); and the Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan (Lir)
Address correspondence to C. H. Wang at the address above, or e-mail: chingho{at}ntu.edu.tw.
Molecular sexing of the diversified avian family Strigidae is difficult. Sex identification using the intron length difference between W and Z chromosomal CHD1 genes, as visualized by agarose gel electrophoreses, often produces ambiguous results. Here we describe a simple method for sexing a variety of Strigidae species using oligonucleotide microarrays, on which several sex-specific probes operated complementarily or in concert. The sex of 8 owl species was identified clearly on the microarrays through sequence recognition. This sequence-directed method can be easily applied to a wider range of Strigidae species.
Corresponding Editor: Oliver Ryder
Received December 8, 2006
Accepted October 12, 2007