Full Length Research Paper

Identification and phylogenetic analysis of filamentous Cyanobacteria using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting

G. Mahendra Perumal, V. Ganesan and N. Anand*

Centre for Advanced Studies in Botany, University of Madras, Chennai-600 025, India.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: anandalgae@gmail.com. Tel: +91 044-22300283.

Abbreviations: RAPD, Random amplification of polymorphic DNA; ERIC, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus; REP, repetitive extragenic palindromic; TBE, tris borate-EDTA; UPGMA, unweighted pair–group method using arithmetic averages.

Accepted 9 January, 2009

RAPD techniques were used for the detection of genetic heterogeneticity among the axenic culture of fresh water cyanobacterial isolates. The electrophoretic patterns for 12 cyanobacterial strains belonging to 2 genera (8 Oscillatoria strains and 4 Lyngbya strains) were used for molecular analysis using the RAPD technique. A tTotal ofly 12 cyanobacterial isolates were selected and mass cultured in BG11 medium. Genomic DNA was extracted from fresh water cyanobacterial isolates and was amplified using primers D7, M13, OPC11, OPC12, OPC13, OPC14 and OPC15 and distinct PCR fingerprint were generated. Unique banding patterns were observed from all tested cyanobacterial species and their molecular weights of each band wereare used to calculate their genetic distance among them. Random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was carried out for the phylogenetic characterization of these strains. RAPD fingerprinting results clearly showed the genetic variation among the cyanobacterial isolates.
 

Key words: Cyanobacteria, phylogenetic analysis, RAPD, PCR, primers.