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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Statistical Genetics and Methodology
Volume 16 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1544062
This article is part of the Research Topic Expanding Insights Into Structure, Function, and Disorder of Genome by the Power of Artificial Intelligence in Bioinformatics View all articles
Morphological Description and DNA Barcoding Research of Nine Syringa Species
Provisionally accepted
Meiqi Zhang 1
Xiaoou Zhai 2,3
Lianqing He 4
Zhen Wang 4 Huiyan Cao 4
Panpan Wang 4
Weichao Ren 4*
Wei Ma 1,4*- 1 School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China
- 2 College of Landscape Architecture, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China
- 3 Heilongjiang Forest Botanical Garden, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China
- 4 College of Pharmacy, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China
Syringa plants are renowned for their outstanding ornamental value, traditional morphological identification methods fail to meet the needs of efficient identification. DNA barcoding has emerged as a promising tool for efficient species discrimination. However, research on Syringa DNA barcodes remains limited. This study adopted a multi-locus strategy, incorporating the nuclear ITS2 region alongside chloroplast genome regions psbA-trnH, trnL-trnF, and trnL, to evaluate the effectiveness of Syringa DNA barcodes. The assessment was conducted through genetic distance analysis, BLAST searches in NCBI, sequence character analysis, and phylogenetic tree construction, examining both individual and combined sequences. The results indicated that in genetic distance analysis, the sequence combination of ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF exhibited a variation pattern where the majority of interspecific genetic distances were greater than intraspecific genetic distances. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results for interspecific distances of each sequence showed that, except for psbA-trnH, the interspecific differences of the ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF sequence were greater than those of all single and combined sequences. The BLAST analysis results revealed that the identification rate of nine Syringa species using ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF could reach 98.97%. In the trait-based method, ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF could be used for the identification of the nine Syringa species. Moreover, the neighbor-joining (NJ) tree constructed based on ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF could cluster each of the nine Syringa species into a separate clade.The study ultimately selected the barcode ITS2 + psbA-trnH + trnL-trnF, with an identification rate of 93.6%, as the optimal barcode for the identification of nine species of Syringa trees.
Keywords: Syringa, DNA barcoding, ITS2, PSBA-TRNH, trnL-trnF, TRNL, Species identification
Received: 12 Dec 2024; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Zhai, He, Wang, Cao, Wang, Ren and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Weichao Ren, College of Pharmacy, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China
Wei Ma, School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China
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