title: ycf1, the most promising plastid DNA barcode of land plants.
abstract: A DNA barcode is a DNA fragment used to identify species. For land plants, DNA fragments of plastid genome could be the primary consideration. Unfortunately, most of the plastid candidate barcodes lack species-level resolution. The identification of DNA barcodes of high resolution at species level is critical to the success of DNA barcoding in plants. We searched the available plastid genomes for the most variable regions and tested the best candidates using both a large number of tree species and seven well-sampled plant groups. Two regions of the plastid gene ycf1, ycf1a and ycf1b, were the most variable loci that were better than existing plastid candidate barcodes and can serve as a barcode of land plants. Primers were designed for the amplification of these regions, and the PCR success of these primers ranged from 82.80% to 98.17%. Of 420 tree species, 357 species could be distinguished using ycf1b, which was slightly better than the combination of matK and rbcL. For the well-sampled representative plant groups, ycf1b generally performed better than any of the matK, rbcL and trnH-psbA. We concluded that ycf1a or ycf1b is the most variable plastid genome region and can serve as a core barcode of land plants.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Wenpan
authors: W
authors: Dong
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Chao
authors: C
authors: Xu
authors: 1] State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China [2] University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors: Changhao
authors: C
authors: Li
authors: 1] State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China [2] University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors: Jiahui
authors: J
authors: Sun
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Yunjuan
authors: Y
authors: Zuo
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Shuo
authors: S
authors: Shi
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Tao
authors: T
authors: Cheng
authors: Research Institute of Tropical Forestry, the Chinese Academy of Forestry, Gongdong, Guangzhou 510520, China.
authors: Junjie
authors: J
authors: Guo
authors: State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors: Shiliang
authors: S
authors: Zhou
mesh_terms: D058893:DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic; D019669:Embryophyta / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D017343:Genes, Plant; D018745:Genome, Plant; D018087:Plastids / Q000235:genetics*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014197:Trees / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics