Herbarium tale: the utility of dry specimens for DNA barcoding Juncaceae

0503477 - ÚEB 2019 RIV AT eng J - Journal Article
Do, D. - Záveská Drábková, Lenka
Herbarium tale: the utility of dry specimens for DNA barcoding Juncaceae.
Plant Systematics and Evolution. Roč. 304, č. 2 (2018), s. 281-294. ISSN 0378-2697. E-ISSN 1615-6110
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GAP506/11/0774; GA ČR(CZ) GA16-14649S
Institutional support: RVO:61389030
Keywords : DNA barcoding * Dry plants * Herbarium specimens * Juncaceae
OECD category: Plant sciences, botany
Impact factor: 1.585, year: 2018

Phylogenetic and barcoding studies usually use fresh plant tissues as sources of DNA and have successfully amplified DNA for various loci. The use of dried samples, however, is often necessary due to the frequent inaccessibility of fresh rare plants or their parts for genetic analyses or barcoding. The difficulty in obtaining amplifiable DNA is a major restriction of the use of herbarium specimens for DNA analyses. Recent study has highlighted the crucial issues for comparing herbarium and fresh plants for barcoding. We analysed the performance of samples of the family Juncaceae from various herbarium specimens of different ages with fresh plant material in PCRs and the sequences of seven loci (rbcL, rpoC1, trnL-F intergenic spacer, trnL intron, and psbA-trnH from chloroplast DNA, atp1 from mitochondrial DNA, and ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 from nuclear DNA) using a combination of 28 primers. The herbarium specimens amplified well and may thus be successfully applied for both phylogenetic analyses and barcoding for the Juncaceae family. Amplifying DNA was more difficult from dried herbarium specimens than fresh samples but could be successful in most cases when appropriate internal primers were designed or methods were optimised. Using the set of universal primers recommended by the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and designing specific primers for a particular group of interest were both useful. Specimen age and amplicon length had limited detrimental effects on amplification success for most of the Juncaceae loci tested.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0295299