Journal of Forensic Medicine

Development of Molecular Markers in Medicinal Salvia Species

Abstract

Yang Liu

We used the Illumina Hiseq 2500 technology to sequence the chloroplast genomes of Salvia bowleyana, S. splendens and S. officinalis in order to thoroughly establish their evolutionary relationships and create molecular markers for species classification. S. bowleyana, S. splendens and S. officinalis all had chloroplast genomes that were 151,387, 150,604 and 151,163 base pairs long, respectively. The IR areas contained the six genes ndhB, rpl2, rpl23, rps7, rps12 and ycf2. There are 29 tandem repeats, 35 simple sequence repeats, 24 simple sequence repeats and 47, 49, 40 interspersed repeats in the chloroplast genomes of S. bowleyana, S. splendens and S. officinalis, respectively. The 23 Salvia species could be distinguished by the three distinct intergenic sequences (IGS) of rps16-trnQ-UUG, trnL-UAA-trnF-GAA and trnM-CAU-atpE. Genetic distance analysis allowed the identification of 91 intergenic spacer sequences in total. The two specific IGS areas (ycf3-trnS-GGA and trnG-GCC-trnM-CAU) exhibit the highest K2p values among the three Salvia species under investigation. The phylogenetic tree also demonstrated that the 23 species of Salvia formed a monophyletic group. The discovery of two sets of genus-specific DNA barcode primers. The findings will give a strong foundation for understanding how the three Salvia species are classified phylogenetically. Additionally, the unique intergenic regions can offer the potential to distinguish Salvia species based on both phenotypic and the differentiation of gene segments.