Informative chloroplast regions in Ilex paraguariensis and Ilex affinis, for phylogenetic and species identification

STEPHANIE TALAVERA LILIANA; FAY J V; PERCUOCO C B; ROJAS C; MIRETTI M; SEIJO J G; ARGUELLES C

Congreso; International Plant Molecular Biology Congress; 2015

Argentinacontains seven species of the genus Ilex L. (Aquifoliaceae), including I. paraguariensis, which is economicallyimportant, and I. affinis, a shrubbyspecies of riparian habitat that was recently cited as occurring in AtlanticForest. Knowing that within the genus the phylogenetic relationships of I. affinis are still unknown and thereis a need for makers that can be used to determine dopants in I. paraguariensis leaves products (yerbamate), this work aimed to characterize different chloroplast regions that couldhelp in establishing phylogenetic relationships between I. affinis and other species of the genus in South America, as wellas to differentiate the species. A total of 15 individuals (I. paraguariensis= 11, I. affinis= 4) were collected from fivedistant natural and cultivated populations of I. paraguariensis from Argentina and Paraguay and a natural populationof I. affinnis from Argentine. The analysesof three chloroplast regions, one intron [trnL] and two intergenic spacers [petG-trnP,psbJ-petA] identified one haplotype for each species showing no intraspecific differences.However, interspecific haplotype/nucleotide differences were observed (transitions,transversions and InDels). The alignment of 469 bp of thetrnL intron was used in the phylogenetic relationships analysis includingsequences of eight species of the genus available in GenBank and considering Helwinia japonica as outgroup. Two clusterswere defined: one grouping Brazilian species and the second grouping Argentinespecies. Inside the latter, I. affinisand I. dumosa were grouped (BS: 0.89).Also, the data suggested that the three tested regions might be useful inspecies identification.