Full Length Research Paper

Phylogenetic analysis of the genus Anabaena based on PCR fingerprinting

Anbalagan Ezhilarasi* and Narayanaswamy Anand

Centre for Advanced Studies in Botany, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai - 600025, India.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: anbuezhilarasi@gmail.com. Tel: +91-044-24455497 or +91-9884653919. Fax: +91-044-22430775.

Accepted 6 November, 2009

   Abstract

In this study, ten species of Anabaena were used to test the congruence between the traditional morphological classification system and the present molecular classification system. For morphological classification, strains were categorized into two different groups based on the whether or not the akinetes were directly adjacent to heterocysts in the trichome. Genetic diversity was assessed using the banding patterns of repetitive DNA sequences including the short tandemly repeated repetitive (STRR) sequences and long tandemly repeated repetitive (LTRR) sequences that are present in the cyanobacterial genome. The phylogenetic relationships inferred from comparison of the STRR sequences generally supported the traditional classification of cyanobacteria based on morphological criteria. The dendrograms based on the LTRR sequences did not show a clear correlation with the dendrogram based on morphology.

Key words: Anabaena, cyanobacteria, short tandemly repeated repetitive (STRR) sequences, long tandemly repeated repetitive (LTRR) sequences, PCR (Polymerase chain reactions), phylogenetic analysis.