Internal transcribed spacer (its) sequence analysis of nuclear ribosomal dna (nrdna) in averrhoa l

The present study focuses on the insights of intraspecific and interspecific variability to address the questions related to diversity among the collections of Averrhoa (Averrhoa bilimbi and A. carambola). Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of nuclear ribosomal DNA (nrDNA) from fifteen collections, belonging to six districts of Kerala state were analyzed. Nucleotide sequences obtained were deposited in the database and showed high percentage of similarity with the already deposited sequences in the database. Multiple sequence alignments entailed 561 conserved sites, 54 variable characters and 33 parsimony informative sites out of 615 characters aligned. Based on Maximum composite likelihood analysis, the estimated transition/transversion bias (R) was 0.53. The estimated mean nucleotide diversity of ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 within subpopulations was 0.005, mean diversity in entire population was 0.035 and mean inter population diversity was 0.030. Phylogenetic and molecular evolutionary analyses revealed that the Averrhoa collections used in this study could be classified distinctly into two groups, those belonging to A. bilimbi and the rest to A. carambola. A higher sequence similarity could be noticed among the sour and sweet A. carambola collections, while three A. bilimbi collections, could be discriminated from the rest.