procedures for dna extraction and amplification from quills of crested porcupine (<em>hystrix cristata</em>)

<strong>Abstract</strong> Genetic analysis in mammalian populations are useful for any conservation management. This kind of analysis utilised tissue of specimens studied involving a damages to the populations, only recently many study are indicated alternative procedure based on scales, hairs or feathers. The porcupine (<em>Histrix cristata</em>) is an elusive species with localised populations. In this work I propose one procedure of genetic analysis starting by DNA quill in order to help studies about this species, without damage the population examined. The quills are easy to find because the porcupine loss them constantly. Nucleic acids extraction was done utilising synthetic resin (chelex) and then ipervariable region of mitochondrial DNA was amplified through PCR with specific primers. The advantages of this selective amplification is the selective increase of interest DNA in spite of possible organic contamination. At this point two different procedure could be utilised to characterise of population: restriction fragment analysis or sequence analysis.