author(s)
Govind Singh Dhakad, Gyanchand Gahlot, Vijay Kumar Agrawal, HK Narula and Urmila Pannu

abstract
The variation in body weight of Magra sheep depends on the gene affecting the muscular growth. Therefore the present study was carried out to investigate the genetic variation in growth regulating MSTN gene through PCR based SSCP marker. Genomic DNA was isolated from whole blood of randomly selected Magra sheep (N=74) maintained at Livestock Research Farm, CSWRI, Bikaner campus through spin column method. A 311bp fragment comprising of intron 2 region of MSTN gene was amplified through designed homologous primers (GenBank accession number JN856480) at an annealing temperature of 54 °C. SSCP marker analysis was carried on 8% non denaturing polyacrylamide gels at 120 V for 7 h at 4 ^oC to detect SNP's responsible for genetic variation. The results detected three conformational patterns in the genotypic frequency of 0.73 (AA), 0.17 (AB), 0.10 (BB) with allele frequency of 0.818 (A) and 0.182 (B). The study concluded that nucleotide variation exist in intron 2 of myostatin gene.