Abstract
Haematococcus pluvialis (Flotow) is a unicellular green alga, which is considered to be the best astaxanthin-producing organism. Molecular markers are suitable tools for the purpose of finding out genetic variations in organisms; however there have been no studies conducted on ISSR or RAPD molecular markers for this organism. The DNA of 10 different strains of H. pluvialis (four strains from Iran, two strains from Finland, one strain from Switzerland and three strains from the USA) was extracted. A genetic similarity study was carried out using 14 ISSR and 12 RAPD primers. Moreover, the molecular weights of the bands produced ranged from 0.14 to 3.4 Kb. The PCA and dendrogram clustered the H. pluvialis strains into various groups according to their geographical origin. The lowest genetic similarity was between the Iran2 and USA2 strains (0.08) and the highest genetic similarity was between Finland1 and Finland2 (0.64). The maximum numbers of bands produced by the ISSR and RAPD primers were 35 and 6 bands, respectively. The results showed that ISSR and RAPD markers are useful for genetic diversity studies of Haematococcus as they showed geographical discrimination.
Highlights
Algae are one of the most useful natural resources that can be used to produce different bioactive compounds such as vitamins, proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, antioxidants and carotenoids, including astaxanthin
The results showed that Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) and RAPD markers are useful for genetic diversity studies of Haematococcus as they showed geographical discrimination
The objective of this study was to find out the genetic diversity of the green unicellular alga, Haematococcus pluvialis by using ISSR and RAPD markers
Summary
Algae are one of the most useful natural resources that can be used to produce different bioactive compounds such as vitamins, proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, antioxidants and carotenoids, including astaxanthin. During the past two decades, scientists have discovered that Haematococcus, a unicellular green alga, is the best source of organisms that produce astaxanthin, the most powerful naturally occurring antioxidant. Morphological traits observed through the light microscope have been traditionally used to determine the species and the diversity of Haematococcus, which has a complex life cycle with different morphological stages affected by environmental conditions. The morphology alone is not able to recognize strains which have various shapes in diverse environmental conditions and the cryptic species (due to recent speciation) with similar morphological traits they are different genetically [5]. Molecular and genetic characters are affected less than the morphological characters by environmental conditions, they are more stable [6]. The combination of molecular and morphology provide a robust way to determine organisms with lower mistakes
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