ITS2 is an ideal barcode to infer the phylogenetic relationships in Artemisia spp.

Abstract

Molecular studies have shown that many biological species that have accumulated genetic divergence without accompanying morphological variations, cannot be identified using the morphological species concept. So the identification of such morphologically obscure species is a major problem to modern taxonomy. Some organisms undergo intricate developmental life cycles which consists of several morphologically distinct stages. These species have morphological keys that explain adult stages with reference to a single gender. Sometimes, specimens are damaged or incomplete, with only a small portion of tissue for identification which makes morphological determination difficult. In the case of plants, lack of vegetative states, ie. (periods lacking flowers or fruits) make identification difficult. DNA sequencing has been used to explain evolutionary relationships for more than 20 years in molecular systematics. Advancement in molecular biology and DNA sequencing techniques has helped to characterize the genomes of various organisms fastly. Analyses of the DNA sequences of various species provide valuable information about their taxonomy, gene makeup and utilizations. The present study focussed on the phylogenetic analysis of selected Artemisia spp. using the sequences retrieved from the GenBank. The phylogenetic tree were constructed using ITS2 gene sequences in Mega software inorder to infer the relationships with other Artemisia species.