DNA barcoding identification of original plants of a rare medicinal material Resina Draconis and related Dracaena species

Abstract

Resina Draconis, a rare and precious traditional medicine in China, is known as the "holy medicine for promoting blood circulation". According to the national drug standard, it's derived from the resin extracted from the wood of Dracaena cochinchinensis, a Liliaceae plant. In addition, a variety of Dracaena species all over the world can form red resins, and there is currently no molecular identification method that can efficiently identify the origin of Dracaena medicinal materials. In this study, seven species of Dracaena distributed in China were selected as the research objects. Four commonly used DNA barcodes(ITS2, matK, rbcL and psbA-trnH), and four highly variable regions(trnP-psaJ, psbK-psbI, trnT-trnL, clpP) in chloroplast genome were used to evaluate the identification efficiency of Dracaena species. The results showed that clpP sequence fragment could accurately identify seven species of Dracaena plants. However, due to the long sequence of clpP fragment, there were potential problems in the practical application process. We found that the combined fragment "psbK-psbI+ trnP-psaJ" can also be used for accurate molecular identification of the Resina Draconis origin plants and relative species of Dracaena, which were both relatively short sequences in the combined fragment, showing high success rates of amplification and sequencing. Therefore, the "psbK-psbI+ trnP-psaJ" combined fragment can be used as the DNA barcode fragments for molecular identification of Resina Dracon's origin plants and relative species of Dracaena. Research on the identification of Dracaena species, the results of this study can be used to accurately identify the original material of Resina Draconis, and providing effective means for identification, rational development and application of Resina Draconis base source.