Dataset Information

ITS2 Secondary Structure Improves Discrimination between Medicinal "Mu Tong" Species when Using DNA Barcoding.

ABSTRACT: DNA barcoding is a promising species identification method, but it has proved difficult to find a standardized DNA marker in plant. Although the ITS/ITS2 RNA transcript has been proposed as the core barcode for seed plants, it has been criticized for being too conserved in some species to provide enough information or too variable in some species to align it within the different taxa ranks. We selected 30 individuals, representing 16 species and four families, to explore whether ITS2 can successfully resolve species in terms of secondary structure. Secondary structure was predicted using Mfold software and sequence-structure was aligned by MARNA. RNAstat software transformed the secondary structures into 28 symbol code data for maximum parsimony (MP) analysis. The results showed that the ITS2 structures in our samples had a common four-helix folding type with some shared motifs. This conserved structure facilitated the alignment of ambiguous sequences from divergent families. The structure alignment yielded a MP tree, in which most topological relationships were congruent with the tree constructed using nucleotide sequence data. When the data was combined, we obtained a well-resolved and highly supported phylogeny, in which individuals of a same species were clustered together into a monophyletic group. As a result, the different species that are often referred to as the herb "Mu tong" were successfully identified using short fragments of 250 bp ITS2 sequences, together with their secondary structure. Thus our analysis strengthens the potential of ITS2 as a promising DNA barcode because it incorporates valuable secondary structure information that will help improve discrimination between species.

SUBMITTER: Zhang W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4488503 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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ITS2 Secondary Structure Improves Discrimination between Medicinal "Mu Tong" Species when Using DNA Barcoding.

Zhang Wei W Yuan Yuan Y Yang Shuo S Huang Jianjun J Huang Luqi L

PloS one 20150701 7

DNA barcoding is a promising species identification method, but it has proved difficult to find a standardized DNA marker in plant. Although the ITS/ITS2 RNA transcript has been proposed as the core barcode for seed plants, it has been criticized for being too conserved in some species to provide enough information or too variable in some species to align it within the different taxa ranks. We selected 30 individuals, representing 16 species and four families, to explore whether ITS2 can success ...[more]

PMID: 26132382

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Project description:BackgroundCurrent molecular phylogenetic studies of Lepidoptera and most other arthropods are predominantly based on mitochondrial genes and a limited number of nuclear genes. The nuclear genes, however, generally do not provide sufficient information for young radiations. ITS2 , which has proven to be an excellent nuclear marker for similarly aged radiations in other organisms like fungi and plants, is only rarely used for phylogeny estimation in arthropods, although universal primers exist. This is partly due to difficulties in the alignment of ITS2 sequences in more distant taxa. The present study uses ITS2 secondary structure information to elucidate the phylogeny of a species-rich young radiation of arthropods, the butterfly subgenus Agrodiaetus. One aim is to evaluate the efficiency of ITS2 to resolve the phylogeny of the subgenus in comparison with COI , the most important mitochondrial marker in arthropods. Furthermore, we assess the use of compensatory base changes in ITS2 for the delimitation of species and discuss the prospects of ITS2 as a nuclear marker for barcoding studies.ResultsIn the butterfly family Lycaenidae, ITS2 secondary structure enabled us to successfully align sequences of different subtribes in Polyommatini and produce a Profile Neighbour Joining tree of this tribe, the resolution of which is comparable to phylogenetic trees obtained with COI+COII . The subgenus Agrodiaetus comprises 6 major clades which are in agreement with COI analyses. A dispersal-vicariance analysis (DIVA) traced the origin of most Agrodiaetus clades to separate biogeographical areas in the region encompassing Eastern Anatolia, Transcaucasia and Iran.ConclusionsWith the inclusion of secondary structure information, ITS2 appears to be a suitable nuclear marker to infer the phylogeny of young radiations, as well as more distantly related genera within a diverse arthropod family. Its phylogenetic signal is comparable to the mitochondrial marker COI . Compensatory base changes are very rare within Polyommatini and cannot be used for species delimitation. The implementation of secondary structure information into character-based phylogenetic methods is suggested to further improve the versatility of this marker in phylogenetic studies.

Dataset Information

ITS2 Secondary Structure Improves Discrimination between Medicinal "Mu Tong" Species when Using DNA Barcoding.

Publications

ITS2 Secondary Structure Improves Discrimination between Medicinal "Mu Tong" Species when Using DNA Barcoding.

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