Desempenho forense de microssatÃlites para a investigaÃÃo da origem de Cannabis sativa no Brasil e no Paraguai

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

The black market of Cannabis sativa (marijuana) in Brazil is basically supplied by illegal plantations from Paraguay, North and Northeastern Brazil. Without a well established intelligence service is difficult to state the right origin of large and small apprehensions. Any new technology that helps this task will be of inestimable value for the war against the illegal marijuana dealing. Technology based on DNA variation could play an important role as an intelligence tool to establish relationship between apprehensions and drug origin. This potentiality is maximized by the recent development of C. sativa microsatellites, which are informative markers for genetics studies, being especially useful in obtaining diversity and genetic structure data of natural or cultivated populations. The work presented here shows the development of two PCR-multiplex reactions that amplify 11 microsatellites, genotyped in only one electrophoresis run. These multiplex system where used to genotype 477 plants from 12 cultivated areas from Brazil and Paraguay. The data analysis showed that plants from the 12 cultivated areas can be structured in 5 groups representing areas from Pernambuco state in Brazil, two areas in MaranhÃo state, one area in Paraguay and one group representing five areas in Paraguay. Excess of homozygous genotypes was found in several loci and analyses strongly support null alleles as the main explanation. Assignment tests applied to plants stratified as Brazilians or Paraguayans showed that using allele frequencies from the 11 loci 94% of the 477 plants were correctly assigned. This value drops to 90 % when plants are stratified in five groups. The results showed to be very promising to continue investigating new microsatellites and start moving to samples from apprehensions. As far as we are aware this is the first work that investigates formally the use of C. sativa microsatellites with a forensic perspective that envisages practical applications

ASSUNTO(S)

gographical origin combate ao narcotrÃfico origem geogrÃfica mosatellites genetica microssatÃlites relacionamento genÃtico genetic relationship combat to the drug traffic cannabis sativa biotecnologia; maconha; trÃfico de drogas

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