Maturase K (matK) as a Barcode in Bamboos Leelavathy S.1**, Sankar P. Deepa2* 1Department of Biotechnology, School of Bio Sciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore-632014, India. 2VIT Centre for Agricultural Innovations and Advanced Learning (VAIAL), Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore-632014, India. *Corresponding Author E-mail: pdeepasankar@vit.ac.in
**leelavathys2015@gmail.com
Online published on 30 April, 2021. Abstract The identification of bamboos through their phenotypic characters might be inadequate. Hence short sections of genomic DNA as barcodes are utilized for molecular level identification of the species. Possibility of utilizing Maturase K (matK) primer to obtain a unique barcode has been analyzed for ten bamboo species in this study. Out of the ten bamboo species screened, Phyllostachys sp. alone failed to amplify. The remaining nine species got amplified, but only four among them recorded significant amplification as was observed through agarose gel electrophoresis and sequencing. Accession numbers from NCBI (MN867476-MN867479) were obtained for the amplified matK sequences of Bambusa balcooa, Dendrocalamus asper, B. vulgaris and B. nutans. On performing BLAST, it was found that matK barcode of D. asper showed 100% identity with four other D. asper accessions. Bambusa balcooa had a 100% identical match with B. balcooa and 99.62% similarity with B. pallida and B. variostriata.B. nutans had 100% similarity with B. nutans and 98.29% similarity with B. lako, B. insularis, Oxytenanthera abyssinica, and Phyllostachys vivax f. huanwenzhu. MatK barcode of B. vulgaris had 100% similarity with the B. vulgaris, Gigantochloa atroviolacea, Dendrocalamus strictus, Dinochloa utilis and B. ventricosa. Poor amplification due to quality of DNA could be ruled out because high quality of genomic DNA was obtained from tender rolled leaves, which were verified through NanoDrop spectrophotometer. Barcode obtained utilizing Maturase K primer can be utilized for identifying D. asper but cannot be considered as a suitable barcode for the rest of the species under study. Top Keywords Bamboo, MatK, Barcoding, Amplification, PCR. Top |