A highly polymorphic STR locus in Cannabis sativa.
We report on the first short tandem repeat (STR) locus to be isolated from the plant Cannabis sativa. The STR locus, isolated by a hybrid-capture enrichment procedure, was found to contain a simple sequence repeat motif of 6 bp. This 6 bp repeat motif showed no variation in repeat length but with minor variations in repeat unit sequences. The data show the locus to be highly polymorphic with the number of repeat units ranging from 3 to 40 in 108 screened samples. The observed heterozygosity was approximately 87.04%. The forward and reverse primers (CS1F and CS1R) produced no PCR products in cross-reaction study from 20 species of plants, including highly related species such as Humulus japonicus and Nicotiana tabacum. This hexanucleotide repeat DNA locus could be used to identify cannabis samples and predict their genetic relationship as the test is specific to C. sativa and is highly reproducible.
Hsieh
Hsing-Mei
HM
Department of Forensic Science, Central Police University, 56 Shu-Jen Road, Kwei-San, Taoyuan 33334, Taiwan, ROC.
Hou
Rur-Jyun
RJ
Tsai
Li-Chin
LC
Wei
Chih-Sheng
CS
Liu
Su-Wen
SW
Huang
Li-Hung
LH
Kuo
Yi-Chen
YC
Linacre
Adrian
A
Lee
James Chun-I
JC
D000483:Alleles; D002188:Cannabis / Q000235:genetics*; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000235:genetics; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D012639:Seeds / Q000235:genetics; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences