Genetical and morphological studies on Ficus trees
Houssam El-Din El-Wakil, Amera F. Zaitoun, Bothaina Weheda, Asmaa Abushady, Ahmed Khalid, Naglaa M. Ali
Abstract
In this current study, DNA barcoding and fifteen plant species of Ficus genus belongs to family moracea were used. The plant species were collected from the botanical garden of Antoniadis Alexandria government, Egypt. To authenticate the morphological identification and measure the evolutionary rate among them, rbcL and matK genes were used as genes universal DNA barcoding. The obtained results for rbcL gene amplification success were 93% and the matK gene amplification 80%. The DNA sequencing was got for 14 species of rbcL gene and 11 species for matK gene in addition, the matK and rbcL sequences for all samples were checked by GenBank databases and the accession numbers were detected for all the studied species. Finally, the rbcL was suggested as a plant barcode for its discriminatory power at high taxonomic levels than matK barcode.