Identification of Chlorophyceae based on 18S rDNA sequences from Persian Gulf.
OBJECTIVE
Chlorophyceae are important constituents of marine phytoplankton. The taxonomy of Chlorophyceae was traditionally based solely on morphological characteristics. In the present research project, genetic diversity was investigated to analyze five species of Chlorophyceae from waters of the Persian Gulf.


METHODS
A clone library of the ribosomal small subunit RNA gene (18S rDNA) in the nuclear genome was constructed by PCR, and then, after examining the clones, selected clones were sequenced. The determined clone sequences were analyzed by a similarity search of the NCBI GenBank database using BLAST.


CONCLUSIONS
Eleven sequences were identified correctly and used for phylogenetic analysis. We identified species of Chlorophyta (Chlorella sorokiniana, Chlamydomonas sp., Neochloris aquatic, Picochlorum sp. and Nannochloris atomus) without the need to conduct extensive colony isolation techniques. Therefore, this improved molecular method can be used to generate a robust database describing the species diversity of environmental samples.
Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran.
Raheem
R
Haddad
Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran.
Esmat
E
Alemzadeh
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran.
Ali-Reza
AR
Ahmadi
Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran.
Ramin
R
Hosseini
Persian Gulf & Oman Sea Ecological Research Institute, Bandar Abbas, Iran.
Maryam
M
Moezzi
18S rDNA; Chlorophyceae; Clone library; Persian Gulf; Phylogeny