javascript:void(0)Chinese pangolins found in Nepal have highly divergent cytB
sequence
Comparison of cytB sequence obtained from Chinese pangolin
originating from Nepal with other publicly available Chinese pangolin
sequences showed that Chinese pangolins from Nepal, group together in
their own sub clade (Fig. 3). Across 424 bp of cytB sequence, the
pangolin samples sequenced in this study had between 15 and 19
nucleotide differences (95.5 – 96.5% similarity) compared to reference
Chinese pangolin sequences sampled in China (Hua et al. 2020),
Taiwan (Sun et al. 2021) and Thailand (Gaubert et al. 2018). A neighbour joining tree grouped pangolin from Nepal as a sister
clade to Chinese pangolin from China (M. p. aurita ) and Taiwan
(M. p. pentadactyla ) (Fig. 3). This suggests that Chinese
pangolin from Nepal represent a genetic lineage distinct from those
found in China and Thailand, but the geographic extent across which
pangolins with these haplotypes is distributed requires further
investigation.