author(s)
Maryam Talebi Haghighi and TS Jagadeesh Kumar

abstract
The activity level of esterase and acid phosphatase in bivoltine and polyvoltine silkworm strains by Native-PAGE was documented for investigation of genetic diversity and their voltinism expression. Furthermore, the quantitative amount of total protein of haemolymph was estimated with help of SDS-PAGE. The expression of seven α-esterases and five acid phosphatase specific alleles were observed. The dendrogram produced by UPGMA analysis, based on Dice’s coefficient, clustered four races into two major groups which accurately segregated them according to their inheritance of voltinism. The genetic distance between strains ranged from 0.07 to 0.43. The research outcome showed that, the Pure Mysore strain exhibited higher allelic expressions of protein when compared to other strains. Despite exhibiting their unique breed, these biochemical markers represented voltinism-specificity interpreting the origin of each breed and phylogenetic relationships among them. Hence, isozyme fingerprinting technique is beneficial for revealing the genetic variability and polymorphism differentiation among closely related strains.