Background: Angelica sinensis
is awell-known traditional Chinesemedicinal plant.Weaimed to assess the genetic
diversity and relationships in
A. sinensis cultivars collected from different locations of China and also some other
Angelica species.
Results: We employed an improved random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique for the amplification
of DNAmaterials fromten
Angelica
cultivars, and the resultswere verified by inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR)
analysis. Twenty six RAPD primers were used for RAPD, and the amplified bands were found highly polymorphic
(96%). Each primer amplified 8–14 bands with an average of 10.25. The cluster dendrogram showed that the
similarity coefficients ranged from 0.41 to 0.92. The similarity coefficients were higher among different
cultivars of
A. sinensis, and lower among different species. Twenty ISSR primers were used for the amplification,
and each primer generated 6–10 bands with an average of 7.2 bands per primer. The cluster dendrogram
showed that the similarity coefficients ranged from 0.35 to 0.89.
Conclusions: This study genetically characterized the
Angelica species,whichmight have a significant contribution
to the genetic and ecological conservation of this important medicinal plant. Also, this study indicates that the
improved RAPD and ISSR analyses are important and potent molecular tools for the study of genetic diversity
and authentication of organisms.
