TITLE:
Low Genetic Polymorphism at the Cytochrome C Oxidase I in Silkworm Strains of the Brazilian Germplasm Bank
AUTHORS:
Verônica Aureliana Fassina, Thaís Souto Bignotto, Roxelle Ethienne Ferreira Munhoz, Bruno Fulan, Juliana Pereira Bravo, Laura B. Garay, Rafaela Bespalhuk, Claudia Regina das Neves Saez, Naiara Climas Pereira, Graziele Milani Pessini, Maria Aparecida Fernandez
KEYWORDS:
Bombyx mori, Mitochondrial Gene, COI, DNA Mini-Barcode
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Genetics,
Vol.4 No.3,
June
20,
2014
ABSTRACT: Nucleotide
sequences have been used to distinguish species and specimens for many years.
More recently, the use of a partial sequence of 650 bp of the cytochrome c
oxidase I, COI mitochondrial gene, has been proposed for species
identification, known as DNA barcodes. In this work, a short sequence of the
DNA barcode is described—approximately 250 bp, named as “DNA mini-barcode”—to molecularly
identify different silkworm strains maintained at the unique public Germplasm
Bank of Bombyx mori, at the
Universidade Estadual de Maringá, UEM, Brazil. Analysis revealed no significant
differences among the silkworm strains. The phylogenetic tree obtained by the
neighbor-joining method and K2P distance, in which specimens of B. mandarina were used as outgroup,
clustered all the specimens of B. mori in a unique clade. Genetic variability detect within B. mori was low or nonexistent. In conclusion, the partial region
of 250 bp of the mitochondrial gene COI herein analyzed may not be efficient to
discriminate silkworm strains from the UEM Germplasm Bank of Bombyx mori.