Can Malayan tapir's extinction be prevented? A genetic approach to its conservation

2022年5月至8月，研究人员前往马来西亚半岛，利用本研究开发的38种新型微卫星标记对41份野生貘样本进行了微卫星分析。研究人员对来自日本研究机构的6只马来亚貘进行了基因组分析，推测其起源分别来自马来西亚半岛、泰国和苏门答腊岛，从而推断出马来亚貘在进入全新世后的历史有效种群规模的变化，这种变化低至2000-4000年，在10万年前，马来亚貘在东南亚大陆和苏门答腊之间分裂。利用6个基因组和2个公共基因组，开发了24k单核苷酸多态性定制面板，该面板针对对基因功能有中度至高度影响的突变。结果发现，苏门答腊的样本比马来西亚半岛和泰国的样本显示出更高的功能丧失突变。马来西亚和苏门答腊的样本也显示出更高的近交系数。需要更多的样品来澄清这一点。这些成果在三次国际会议上发表，并获得了最佳海报奖。一篇科学文章发表在《全球生态与保护》杂志上。二零零三年三月举办野生动物保育及生物资讯工作坊。一名马来西亚政府野生动物研究官员被邀请到日本参加研讨会，作为能力建设和促进京都大学野生动物研究中心与马来西亚半岛野生动物系之间的研究联系的手段。

From May to August 2022, a research trip was made to Peninsular Malaysia to conduct microsatellite analysis of 41 wild tapir samples using 38 novel microsatellite markers developed in this study. Genomic analyses of six Malayan tapirs from Japan institutions, each two with putative origins from Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra, was conducted to infer the changes in historical effective population size that was as low as 2000-4000 upon entering Holocene and a population split between the mainland Southeast Asia and Sumatran populations >10k years ago. Using the six genomes and two public genomes, a custom panel of 24k single nucleotide polymorphism was developed, which targets mutations that are of moderate to high impacts to the gene functions. It was found that Sumatran samples showed a significantly higher loss-of-function mutations than the Peninsular Malaysian- and Thailand-origin samples. Malaysian and Sumatran samples also show higher inbreeding coefficients from the analysis of runs of homozygosity. More samples are required to clarify this. These results were presented three international conferences and a best poster prize was won. A scientific article was published in Global Ecology and Conservation. A Wildlife Conservation and Bioinformatics Workshop was held in March 2023. A Malaysian government wildlife research officer was invited to Japan to participate in the workshop as a mean for capacity building and for fostering the research connection between Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University and the department of wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia.