Macrophytes in Northern Himalayan Dal Lake of Kashmir valley identified through DNA barcoding shows high antioxidant potential

Abstract

Aquatic macrophytes, the essential biomarkers of environmental conditions and long-term water quality indicators provide habitat to many invertebrates and also play a vital role in biodiversity conservation. Therefore, the current study was focused on identifying the new novel macrophytes of Dal Lake, their sequence characterization, and antioxidant profiling. Twenty different macrophyte leaf isolates were collected from Dal Lake and DNA was extracted from fresh and young leaf samples of different macrophytes followed by PCR amplification using Primer pairs K-Lab-Matk-F and K-Lab-Matk-R. The purified PCR products were outsourced for sequencing. Phylogenetic tree was constructed based on neighbour-joining (NJ) method. Moreover, antioxidant profiling of twenty different types of leaves of macrophytes was determined by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay. The present investigation revealed the taxonomy of the species collected from Dal Lake based on MatK region. The current research findings identified six new macrophyte species viz., Trapa bicornis (Osbeck.), Lycopus uniflorus (Michx.), Carex vestita (Willd.), Potamogeton praelongus (Wulfen), Ceratophyllum platyacanthum (Cham), and Phragmites pusillus, showed antioxidant potential that can be used as superfoods, source of nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals. This research created a path for identifying bioactive compounds of newly identified macrophytes that can impart antioxidant and anticancer characteristics to these macrophytes.