DNA barcoding and molecular studies in gymnema species

Gymnema spp studied in the present research are G. latifolium, G. elegans, G. hirsutum and G. sylvestere. They are important woody climber of family Asclepiadaceae, grows well in tropical and subtropical forests of Indian subcontinent. The plants were used in folk and Ayurvedic system of medicines for the treatment of diabetes, additionally, the plants also possesses antimicrobial, hepato protective and sweet suppressing activities and also used for the treatment of asthma, inflammations, and snake bite. The various reports on its multiple uses attracted attention fortilization of the plant for the major bioactive principle gymnemic acid. Therefore, an initiative has been taken to estimate the level of diversity and genetic relationship among the selected four Gymnema spp. 10 random decamer primers were used for RAPD analysis and Rbcl region of ribosome were also used. Among the 10 primers used only 5 primers produced reproducible and consistent banding pattern, those are OPA-17, OPE-14, OPE-15, OPE-17 and OP0-16. In that OPE-14 produced height 24 bands. And OPA-17 produced 16 bands and in that 14 were polymorphic bands and the percentage of polymorphism was 87.5%.PCR success rate for rbcl loci was 100% and sequence success rate was also 100% success. BLAST results revealed that the three species sequences for rbcl loci was 98% similar. The dendrogram revealed the phylogenitic order of the species.