Molecular Authentication of the Traditional Medicinal Plant "Lakshman Booti" ( Sm.) and Its Adulterants through DNA Barcoding.

BACKGROUND

Sm. is an annual herb widely used in Indian traditional medical practice and commonly known as "Lakshman booti" in Sanskrit. Morphological resemblance among the species of genus . leads to inaccurate identification and adulteration. This causes inconsistent therapeutic effects and also affects the quality of herbal medicine.

AIM

This study aimed to generate potential barcode for authentication of and its adulterants through DNA barcoding technique.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Genomic DNA extracted from and its adulterants was used as templates for polymerase chain reaction amplification of the barcoding regions. The amplicons were directed for sequencing, and species identification was conducted using BLASTn and unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean trees. In addition, the secondary structures of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 2 region were predicted.

RESULTS

The nucleotide sequence of ITS provides species-specific single nucleotide polymorphisms and sequence divergence (22%) than A-H (10.9%) and L (3.1%) sequences. The ITS barcode indicates that and are closely related compared to other species.

CONCLUSION

ITS is the most applicable barcode for molecular authentication of , and further chloroplast barcodes should be tested for phylogenetic analysis of genus Smithia.

SUMMARY

The present investigation is the first effort of utilization of DNA barcode for molecular authentication of and its adulterants. Also, this study expanded the application of the ITS2 sequence data in the authentication. The ITS has been proved as a potential and reliable candidate barcode for the authentication of . BLASTn: Basic Local Alignment Search Tool for Nucleotide; MEGA: Molecular Evolutionary Genetic Analysis; EMBL: European Molecular Biology Laboratory; A-H: Photosystem II protein D1- stuctural RNA: His tRNA gene; rbcL: Ribulose 1,5 bi-phosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit gene.