Introduction: The largest cat species is the tiger.

This species currently lives throughout many

regions of Asia, but the population has been showing a rapid decrease in size due to factors such
as habitat loss, fragmentation, and human persecution. The tiger is divided into eight different
subspecies. These subspecies are categorized by body size, skull characters, pelage coloration
and striping patters. Three of the eight subspecies had recently become extinct. Lately,
categorization of the tiger species has become much tougher because of such small amounts of
living specimen and evidence to prove certain distinctions. In this experiment, 134 samples of
tigers were collected and three factors were examined: 4kb of mtDNA sequence derived from
primer pairs that excluded Numt, allele variation of 30 hypervariable histocompatibility complex
DRB gene, and allele size variation of 30 hypervariable short tandem repeat loci or
microsatellites ( Luo et al. 2277).
Results: The amplification of the mitochondrial gene fragments (mtDNA) were analyzed. There
were about 30 polymorphisms that were seen within more than one individuals. 29 of the 30
polymorphisms were seen as transitions. Closer analysis of the mtDNA showed defining
geographic areas. With all this analysis as well as certain demonstrations on the cat species, there
was definitely signs of diversity. A DRB gene was also examined between 21 tigers to see
whether there was variation within this gene. There was a total of seven different allele variations
that were detected, even though this number is not a very large variation, it could be detected
between the different tiger populations. During experimentation, there was a separation between
the Indochinese subspecies, northern Indochinese and Malayan Peninsula populations
discovered. Through many different experiments, it was found that the latest common ancestor in
the mtDNA of a tiger was only about 72,000 to 108,000 years old, which actually is not that old
compared to the Panthera species. Overall, there was small genetic variation within the mtDNA,

DRB and microsatellite loci. These small variations showed that there was a difference between
the remaining subspecies. The results gave new information to help distinguish the subspecies.
With the results that have been previously researched and the new results that were found within
these experiments, better care will be used to help the tigers.
Materiel and Methods: 134 different samples were used throughout the experiments that were
conducted. The samples that were used during the experiments came from wildlife or captiveborn. The analysis of the mtDNA was a complicated process. There were many different methods
used to amplify and analyze the mtDNA to find the given results. With the amplification of the
mtDNA, the thirty polymorphic microsatellite loci was also amplified. The DRB gene that was
analyzed were from tigers from different regions. The DRB gene was also amplified.
Discussion: After different methods of study to determine the variation within the tiger family;
not many variations were detected, but there was definitely some levels of molecular genetic
variation in mtDNA and DRB sequence (Luo et al. 2286). These variations were compared to
several other mammalian species (Luo et al. 2286). These results showed that the experiment
conducted by Collier SJ OBrien and other researchers were consistent.

Works Cited
Luo S-J, Kim J-H, Johnson WE, Walt Jvd, Martenson J, Yuhki N, et al. (2004) Phylogeography
and Genetic Ancestry of Tigers (Panthera tigris). PLoS Biol 2(12): e442.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020442