Using DNA Barcodes to Identify Rosaceae

DNA barcoding has recently been proposed as a technique that employs a short, standardized gene region to identify species. DNA barcoding is well established in animals because of a widely appropriate sequence for them, the cytochrome coxidase 1 [1], but there is not any universally accepted barcode for plants till now. Therefore, the primary task for barcoding plants is to find more useful barcodes that can identify as many species as possible. Medicinal plants have been used as traditional Chinese drugs for treating diseases, some of them are similar in morphology, and are often misidentified by chemical fingerprints. Rosaceae includes many medicinal plants with similar morphology and are usually hard to be identified. Here, we chose five potential barcodes, Universal Plastid Amplicon (matK, rpoB, rpoC1, rbcL) and the nuclear ribosomal DNA (rDNA) internal transcribed spacer (ITS), to identify species from different genera in Rosaceae. The results suggest that the nuclear ribosomal DNA (rDNA) internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is a candidate to discriminate all of plant species in Rosaceae. Acknowledgements: We thank all my teachers and classmates in our laboratory very much for their help. References: [1] Kress WJ, et al. (2005) PNAS, 102: 8369–8374.