Oithona nana from the Argentine Sea: towards an accurate taxonomic identification?.

CEPEDA, G. D., BERÓN; VIÑAS, M.D; SALERNO, G.; BERÓN, C.

Mar del Plata. Argentina

Congreso; XLIII Reunión Anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y biología Molecular; 2007

Few studies have been made for marine cyclopoid copepods, and hence our understanding of the functional roles is limited (Paffenhofer, 1993). There are still, many problems in their taxonomy too (Nishida 1985).Fundamental to investigating marine zooplancton dynamics, community structure and diversity is the correct identification of species (Lindeque et al., 2006). When morphological characters cannot discriminate species, molecular techniques may provide useful tools. Bearing this in mind, we proposed to advance into the correct identification of Oithona nana in the Argentine Sea, sequencing first the 28S ribosomal subunit of the type locality: Gulf of Naples, Italy (Giesbrecht, 1892).We employed females of O. nana of Guf of Naples, sampled with a 200 μm mesh size and preserved in 95% ethanol (Bucklin, 2000). We placed and squash a specimen in a PCR tube. The 28S ribosomal was amplified using universal primers P63 and LR6 (Kiesling et al., 2002). The product was cloned and sequenced. We tested the nucleotide fragment identity using BLASTn (Altschul et al., 1990) and then we generated the corresponding dendrogram. This result constitutes the first step towards the correct specie identification of O. nana in the Argentine Sea. Our next goal will be to compare this sequence with the native one to test their homology. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:AdvTimes; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:AdvTimes; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:AdvTimes;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:70.85pt 3.0cm 70.85pt 3.0cm; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->