Abstract Detail

Systematics

Huang, Wu [1], Hollingsworth, Peter [2], Twyford, Alex [3].

Using Nuclear genome to tell plant species apart.

Telling species apart is important but is often difficult. It is critical to get it right if we want to understand the global biodiversity, as to monitoring change, and manage that biodiversity. To address this challenge – DNA barcoding has been developed which uses the information of DNA sequence for species identification. This works fantastically in animals, but problematic in plants. It is because the standard plant DNA barcodes are based on a small amount of DNA from organelle genomes. The information they provide is limited comparing to the massive genomic complexity of plants. Thus, it often gives a resolution in species groups, rather than unique species ID. Beyond the organelle genomes, plant species often has a big nuclear genome. It’s complicated, but there is also a huge amount of information embedded there. My project is about looking at this part of the information from nuclear genomes, to find a new way to develop high-resolution DNA barcodes for plant species identification. Specifically, I am using the rapidly growing body of nuclear DNA sequences(RAD-Seq, Hyb-seq, GBS, etc.) to understand the genomic nature of differences between plant species.  My work to date has shown that nuclear genomes can offer substantial increases in the resolving power compared to standard DNA barcodes.

1 - Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh , Science department, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh , Scotland , EH3 5LR, UK
2 - Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh
3 - University Of Edinburgh, Institute Of Evolutionary Biology, Ashworth Laboratories, Charlotte Auerbach Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3FL, United Kingdom

Keywords:
Nuclear genome
DNA barcoding
Diagnostic loci.

Presentation Type: Poster
Session: P, Systematics Posters
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Thursday, July 30th, 2020
Time: 5:00 PM Time and date to be determined
Number: PSY004
Abstract ID:182
Candidate for Awards:None