Genetic Characterization of Some Cyanobacterial Species Using by RAPD-PCR Technique

Abstract

Cyanobacteria are the ecologically important organisms due to they thrive in wide variety of habitats and some with the ability to produce secondary metabolites known as cyanotoxin. Besides classical identification methods, DNA fingerprint and many other PCR based molecular approaches have being adopted and well used in the molecular systematics and genetic characterization of Cyanobacteria. In this study, 7 bacterial isolates were analyzed through the RAPD-PCR technique using 15 different randomly selected primers. All the bacterial isolates were produced 306 completely polymorphic amplification products. A minimum 12 and maximum 35 different PCR fragments were obtained by the OPA-14 and Hip-GC primers respectively. The size of RAPD-PCR fragments were varied between 175-3.000 bp. Two different dendrogrames (UPGMA ve Neighbor Joining) were created using Nei’s genetic distance and similarity values, to identify genetic relationships among analyzed bacterial isolates. According to the results, the Synechococcus elongatus and Pseudoanabaena moniliformis are defined as the most distant species, while the Anabaena affisinis and Arthrospira sp. are determined as the closest organisms. Consequently, randomly selected primers have generated 100% polymorphic fragments, indicating high efficiency and successful utilization of RAPD-PCR technique in the genetic characterizations and molecular systematics of different Cyanobacteria isolates. Keywords: Cyanobacteria, genetic characterization, DNA polymorphism, RAPD-PCR technique. DOI: 10.7176/JSTR/6-09-09