Abstract: The purpose of this study was to study the paternal origin structure and genetic diversity of red deer in China at the molecular level,and to determine the phylogenetic relationships among various groups.The SRY gene sequences of 159 red deers from 11 populations including Tianshan red deer, Aertai red deer, Tahe red deer and Dongbei red deer.They were detected and analyzed by DNA extraction,PCR and direct sequencing.The base composition,nucleotide diversity (Pi),haplotype diversity (Hd) and frequency were calculated to evaluate genetic diversity and construct the haplotype network diagram,and the phylogenetic tree was constructed by neighbor-joining method(NJ) and maximum likelihood method(MJ) with white lipped deer as outgroup to explore the clustering and genetic diversity of red deer.The results showed that the length of the obtained sequence was 1 615 bp,18 SNPs were identified,accounting for 1.11% of the total number of nucleotides.According to the polymorphic sites,14 haplotypes were identified,and the dominant haplotype was Hap-1 which consists of Tianshan red deer, Aertai red deer, Alashan red deer, Tahe red deer, Dongbei red deer, Gansu red deer, North American red deer and King of red deer population accounted for 35.84%.Among them,Alashan red deer, Tahe red deer, Gansu red deer, Chuanzang red deer, North American red deer and King of red deer all had unique haplotypes.The haplotype diversity ranged from 0 to 0.857,and the nucleotide diversity ranged from 0 to 0.00272.The genetic distance between Tahe red deer and Tibet red deer was the largest (0.002406),and that between Alashan red deer and Qinghai red deer was the smallest (0.000124).The phylogenetic tree based on NJ and ML was consistent which showed that there were three branches among the 11 wild red deer populations.Branch S1 included all the red deer populations.Tahe red deer, Gansu red deer, North American red deer and King of red deer King constituted Branch S2,and North American red deer constituted branch S3.The minimum haplotype network diagram was consistent with the phylogenetic tree.The results showed that there were differences in genetic diversity among different red deer populations.There were two paternal types in Tahe red deer, King of red deer and Gansu red deer,three paternal types in North America red deer and only one paternal type in other red deer populations.Hap-1 was in the core position in Hap-lotype group S1,other haplotypes were scattered around Hap-1.Hap-1 was supposed to be the original haplotype in red deer population.

Key words: red deer; genetic diversity; paternal type; SRY gene