Abstract
Mitochondrial cytochrome b gene plays a serious role in studying adulteration of meat species. This research study designed to distinguish the raw meat species of sheep, goat, cattle and donkey using RFLP-PCR technique of a universal cyt b gene 359bp. Ten indigenous samples were collected from each animal in different parts of the body. All the samples were processed for DNA isolation and amplified with a Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The amplicons were cleavage with HinfI and RsaI restriction enzymes, digestion of PCR product resulted in production of specific characterization bands for each species then analyzed by agarose electrophoresis. HinfI RE created three fragments for sheep, goat and cattle, with some similarities in a few bands between them, while yielded two bands for donkey. RsaI RE produced two bands for all species with different length except sheep and goats have the same length. Thus, results recommend that the RFLP-PCR technique with HinfI and RsaI play an important role to detect the animal meat species, since it is a fast, simple and easily handle method for identification of animal species.
