Inheritance of isozyme variants in Nothofagus antarctica (G.Forster) Oersted

PASTORINO, MARIO JUAN; MARCHELLI, PAULA; MILLERON,MATÍAS; GALLO, LEONARDO ARIEL

Basic and Applied Genetics

Sociedad Argentina de Genética

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2008 vol. 19 p. 27 - 33

1666-0390

Confident tools are needed to analyze genetic variation and evolutionary processes in relation to conservation and use of forest genetic resources. The aim of the present study is to determine the mode of inheritance of isozyme variants of Nothofagus antarctica, an economic and ecological important species of the temperate forests of southern South America. Buds of 56 trees and their offspring were subjected to horizontal starch gel electrophoresis. Good resolution and consistent band patterns were obtained in five out of 15 enzyme systems surveyed. The expectation of equal number of heterozygous and homozygous seedlings of open pollination from a putative heterozygous mother was tested by a Chi-square test. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) revealed invariant electrophoretic patterns. Glutamate-oxalacetate transaminase (GOT) showed two zones of enzymatic activity, each one encoded by a gene locus with codominant expression and three alleles. Two zones were also observed in phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI) and in phosphoglucomutase (PGM), invariant the most anodal in both cases, and with six and five alleles respectively in the variable zone of each of these enzymes. Four confident polymorphic gene markers are thus available for different population genetic studies in Nothofagus antarctica.