Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) polymorphism in the wild Primula (Primulaceae) taxa of Turkey

Authors: MUTLU GÜLTEPE, UĞUR UZUNER, KAMİL COŞKUNÇELEBİ, ALİ OSMAN BELDÜZ, SALİH TERZİOĞLU

Abstract: Twenty-three populations belonging to 10 wild Primula L. (Primulaceae) taxa of Turkey, some of which are morphologically quite similar, were investigated based on nrDNA ITS regions. The plant materials were collected from different geographical areas of Anatolia in vegetation periods of 2005 and 2006. Total genomic DNAs were isolated from the healthy leaves of each population. The entire ITS regions of the populations were amplified by universal primers with the aid of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and then the PCR products were sequenced. Neighbour-Joining (NJ) and Maximum Parsimony (MP) trees were constructed in order to identify the relationships among Primula taxa. According to ITS data, 724 characters were determined among the aligned sequences of the populations and the divergence values were found to be between 0.0% and 20.9%. ITS sequences from 23 specimens provided a number of variable and sufficient characters to explore the relationships. As a result, it was determined that the dendrograms obtained by NJ and MP analysis are concordant with the traditional taxonomical order at subgeneric level.

Keywords: Turkey, ITS PCR, nrDNA, phylogeny, Primula

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