Our research tend to employ a combination of both experimental and computational approaches. we focus on the following areas. Molecular Characterization and Phylogeography of Livestock The domestic animals, cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and dog breeds are widely distributed across all agro-ecological zone and display genetic divergence in their production, reproduction, heat tolerance and disease resistance. Lack of information on genetic characteristics and extent of existing diversity has led to their under utilization, replacement and dilution through indiscriminate breeding. Moreover, some of the well known species/breeds are facing extinction due to over exploitation, loss of habitat, disease, hunting and other destructive factors. Therefore, we characterize different domestic species and their wild counterparts using different DNA markers in order to understand the genetic structure of the species. Gene and Environment Interaction Wild species evolve over a long period of natural selection whereas domestic species gain human preferred traits under a relatively short time through artificial selection. For the most traits studied in livestocks, the environment has a larger impact than genetic factors. Thus, we try to understand the role of epigenetics on phenotype development in livestokcs by decoding the genome and epigenome. Molecular Characterization of Fishes We also characterize the freshwater fishes using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA markers to resolve the taxonomic ambiguity of Indian freshwater fishes. |