Department of Biology, College of Science, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. Box 84428, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Biology, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah 21959, Saudi Arabia.
Genes (Basel). 2023 Feb 12;14(2):469. doi: 10.3390/genes14020469.
Wild medicinal plants are the main source of active ingredients and provide a continuous natural source for many folk medicinal products, a role that is important for society's health with an impressive record of utilization. Thus, surveying, conserving, and precisely identifying wild medicinal plants is required. The current study aimed to precisely identify fourteen wild-sourced medicinal plants from southwest Saudi Arabia, within the Fifa mountains area located in Jazan province, using the DNA barcoding technique. Two DNA regions (nuclear ITS and chloroplast rbcL) were sequenced and analyzed for the collected species using BLAST-based and phylogeny-based identification methods. Based on our analysis, ten of the fourteen species were successfully identified by DNA barcoding, five were identified as morphologically inspected, and three were morphologically indifferent. The study was able to distinguish some key medicinal species and highlight the importance of combining morphological observation with DNA barcoding to ensure the precise identification of wild plants, especially if they are medicinally relevant and associated with public health and safety usage.
野生药用植物是活性成分的主要来源，为许多民间药物提供了持续的天然来源，在利用方面有着令人印象深刻的记录，对社会健康起着重要作用。因此，需要对野生药用植物进行调查、保护和准确识别。本研究旨在利用 DNA 条形码技术，对位于吉赞省法伊夫山脉地区的沙特阿拉伯西南部的 14 种野生药用植物进行准确识别。对采集到的物种进行了核 ITS 和叶绿体 rbcL 两个 DNA 区域的测序和分析，并使用基于 BLAST 和基于系统发育的鉴定方法进行了分析。根据我们的分析，通过 DNA 条形码成功识别了 14 种中的 10 种，5 种通过形态学检查进行了识别，3 种形态上没有区别。该研究能够区分一些关键的药用物种，并强调了将形态观察与 DNA 条形码相结合以确保野生植物准确识别的重要性，特别是如果它们与公共健康和安全使用相关的药用植物。
