African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (7), pp. 601-606, July 2005          
ISSN 1684–5315 © 2005 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Genetic diversity of Mayetiola destructor and Mayetiola hordei (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) by inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs)

Maha MEZGHANI Khemakhem¹, Mohamed MARRAKCHI¹ and Hanem MAKNI^1,2*

¹Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire, Immunologie et Biotechnologie, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, 2092 El Manar, Tunisie.

²Institut Supérieur de l’Animation pour la Jeunesse et la Culture de Bir El Bey. Tunisie.

*Corresponding author. E-Mail: Hanem.Makni@isajc.rnu.tn,

 Fax: 216 71 885 480. Phone: 216 71 872 600.

Accepted 11 April, 2005

Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) polymorphism was used to reveal genetic variability and phylogenetic relationships within and between three haplotypes of Mayetiola species. A set of 14 ISSR primers were screened representing di-, tri, tetra and penta-nucleotide repeats out of which 10 generated scorable bands and three were able to distinguish one of three haplotypes. The consensus tree constructed using binary data from banding patterns generated by ISSR-PCR clustered the two Mayetiola species according to their mitochondrial haplotype. Moreover, genetic diversity estimated by the coefficient of variation indicates a high intra and inter-haplotypes polymorphism. Our results indicate that ISSR can be useful as DNA-based molecular markers for studying genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of Mayetiola haplotypes.

Keywords: Genetic diversity, ISSR markers, Mayetiola, haplotypes.