Belowground DNA-based techniques: untangling the network of plant root interactions

Contains fulltext : 91591.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)7 p

Plant DNA Barcodes Can Accurately Estimate Species Richness in Poorly Known Floras

Extent: 9p.BACKGROUND: Widespread uptake of DNA barcoding technology for vascular plants has been slow due to the relatively poor resolution of species discrimination (~70%) and low sequencing and amplification success of one of the two official barcoding loci, matK. Studies to date have mostly focused on finding a solution to these intrinsic limitations of the markers, rather than posing questions that can maximize the utility of DNA barcodes for plants with the current technology. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we test the ability of plant DNA barcodes using the two official barcoding loci, rbcLa and matK, plus an alternative barcoding locus, trnH-psbA, to estimate the species diversity of trees in a tropical rainforest plot. Species discrimination accuracy was similar to findings from previous studies but species richness estimation accuracy proved higher, up to 89%. All combinations which included the trnH-psbA locus performed better at both species discrimination and richness estimation than matK, which showed little enhanced species discriminatory power when concatenated with rbcLa. The utility of the trnH-psbA locus is limited however, by the occurrence of intraspecific variation observed in some angiosperm families to occur as an inversion that obscures the monophyly of species. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We demonstrate for the first time, using a case study, the potential of plant DNA barcodes for the rapid estimation of species richness in taxonomically poorly known areas or cryptic populations revealing a powerful new tool for rapid biodiversity assessment. The combination of the rbcLa and trnH-psbA loci performed better for this purpose than any two-locus combination that included matK. We show that although DNA barcodes fail to discriminate all species of plants, new perspectives and methods on biodiversity value and quantification may overshadow some of these shortcomings by applying barcode data in new ways.Craig Costion, Andrew Ford, Hugh Cross, Darren Crayn, Mark Harrington and Andrew Low

DNA barcoding for plants

DNA barcoding uses specific regions of DNA in order to identify species. Initiatives are taking place around the world to generate DNA barcodes for all groups of living organisms and to make these data publically available in order to help understand, conserve, and utilize the world’s biodiversity. For land plants the core DNA barcode markers are two sections of coding regions within the chloroplast, part of the genes, rbcL and matK. In order to create high quality databases, each plant that is DNA barcoded needs to have a herbarium voucher that accompanies the rbcL and matK DNA sequences. The quality of the DNA sequences, the primers used, and trace files should also be accessible to users of the data. Multiple individuals should be DNA barcoded for each species in order to check for errors and allow for intraspecific variation. The world’s herbaria provide a rich resource of already preserved and identified material and these can be used for DNA barcoding as well as by collecting fresh samples from the wild. These protocols describe the whole DNA barcoding process, from the collection of plant material from the wild or from the herbarium, how to extract and amplify the DNA, and how to check the quality of the data after sequencing