Identification of Traditional She Medicine Shi-Liang Tea Species and Closely Related Species Using the ITS2 Barcode

Shuangjiao Ma, Qundan Lv, Hong Zhou, Jie Fang, Wenliang Cheng, Chengxi Jiang, Kejun Cheng, Hui Yao
2017 Applied Sciences  
Traditional She medicine is part of China's cultural heritage and has become remarkably popular worldwide. The Shi-Liang tea is made from the processed leaves of Chimonanthus salicifolius S. Y. Hu and Chimonanthus zhejiangensis M. C. Liu. To ensure the safety and efficacy of Shi-Liang tea, we used DNA barcoding based on the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of nuclear ribosomal DNA to distinguish the original plant sources of Shi-Liang tea from closely related species. All 71 ITS2 sequences
more » ... ere aligned by Clustal-W, and genetic distances were computed using MEGA 6.0 according to the Kimura 2-parameter model. The results indicated that the sequence lengths of ITS2 regions of the original plants of Shi-Liang tea and closely related species ranged from 256 bp to 260 bp. Interspecific genetic distances ranged from 0 to 0.078. The neighbor-joining (NJ) tree showed that the original plants of Shi-Liang tea species can be easily differentiated from closely related species. Distinct molecular differences were found between the secondary structures of ITS2 sequences from Shi-Liang tea and closely related species. The results in the present investigation suggested that the ITS2 could be an effective DNA marker to identify the original plants of Shi-Liang tea and their closely related species. These DNA barcodes can greatly benefit the supervision of the commercial circulation of She medicine.
doi:10.3390/app7030195 fatcat:5k47mz6rlvap7dtkf6zlvqweru