Genetic polymorphism of dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene in ten Indian rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta mulatta)

Advances in molecular genetical research have revealed a new platform for studying the configuration and activity correlations of dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene in the non-human primates and human. Among the other five dopamine receptor genes, dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene has variable number of tandem repeats which are polymorphic and located in the third cytoplasmic loop of the receptor. These polymorphism are expressed in the repeat numbers of 48-base pair (bp) sequence coding for 16 amino acids. This study is designed to observe the genetic polymorphism of dopamine receptor D4 gene within the ten Indian rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta mulatta). This research is also planned to compare the genetic sequences among the Indian rhesus macaque DRD4 genetic sequences of our recent study, rhesus macaque DRD4 gene reference sequence provided by ENSEMBL genome browser and human DRD4 gene reference sequence provided by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), USA. In our study, only DRD4 5-repeat allele variant is observed in all the ten selected Indian rhesus macaques. Sequencing data of DRD4 gene of these rhesus macaques indicate that rhesus macaques exhibit 48-bp tandem repeats in the DRD4 receptor gene which is similar to humans and there is intraspecies variability within the rhesus macaque DRD4 genetic sequences.