Identification of medicinal plant Schisandra chinensis using a potential DNA barcode ITS2

Xian-Kuan Li,Rong-Chun Han,Hai-Bo Yin Yin,Bing Wang,Yan-Chao Zheng,Bao-Li Xu,Jian-Kui Zhang,Liang Xu

doi:10.5586/asbp.2013.032

Abstract

To test whether the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region is an effective marker for using in authenticating of the Schisandra chinensis at the species and population levels, separately. And the results showed that the wild populations had higher percentage of individuals that had substitution of C→A at site 86-bp than the cultivated populations. At sites 10-bp, 37-bp, 42-bp and 235-bp, these bases of the Schisandra sphenanthera samples differed from that of S. chinensis. Two species showed higher levels of inter-specific divergence than intra-specific divergence within ITS2 sequences. However, 24 populations did not demonstrate much difference as inter-specific and intra-specific divergences were concerned. Both S. chinensis and S. sphenanthera showed monophyly at species level, yet the samples of different populations shown polyphyly at population level. ITS2 performed well when using BLAST1 method. ITS2 obtained 100% identification success rates at the species level for S. chinensis, with no ambiguous identification at the genus level for ITS2 alone. The ITS2 region could be used to identify S. chinensis and S. sphenanthera in the “Chinese Pharmacopoeia”. And it could also correctly distinguish 100% of species and 100% of genera from the 193 sequences of S. chinensis. Hence, the ITS2 is a powerful and efficient tool for species identification of S. chinensis.

Highlights

Schisandra chinensis (Turcz.) Baill. grows mainly in the northeast China and its mature fruits are famous traditional Chinese medicine recorded in “Chinese Pharmacopoeia”
Analysis of the sites mutation of internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) sequences Base mutation at site 86-bp was found in large quantities of samples in S. chinensis populations
Base mutation at sites 58-bp and 227-bp were found in samples of LB13, PL1 and PL7 in S. sphenanthera populations, but the S. chinensis populations were not found (Tab. 1, Tab. 2)

Summary

Introduction

Schisandra chinensis (Turcz.) Baill. grows mainly in the northeast China and its mature fruits are famous traditional Chinese medicine recorded in “Chinese Pharmacopoeia”. Is important traditional Chinese medicine recorded in “Chinese Pharmacopoeia”, too, but its active components. To our best knowledge, applying ITS2 region to identify plant materials from Schisandra with such a large sample size and geographic range had not been reported. These studies were not found whether the ITS2 region could be used as a genomic marker to identify different Schisandra populations from different ecological environment and geographical distribution. We utilized ITS2 as a DNA barcode to distinguish medicinal plants within the Schisandra genus and populations in order to ensure their safe, effective application in traditional using

Methods

Results

Conclusion