Proceedings of the XLVI Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Giardini Naxos, Italy - 18/21 September, 2002

ISBN 88-900622-3-1

Poster Abstract - 4.46

THE USE OF b-TUBULIN INTRON-SPECIFIC MARKERS FOR ASSAYING GENETIC DIVERSITY IN PLANTS

BARDINI M.*, DONINI P.**, MARIANI A.***, GIANÌ S.****, BREVIARIO D.****

*) Dipartimento di Biologia, Università degli Studi di Milano

**) NIAB, Cambridge UK

***) IRMGPF-CNR, Perugia

****) IBBA-CNR, Milano

molecular marker, genotyping, tubulin introns

TBP (Tubulin Based Polymorphisms) is a new molecular marker tool for the detection of polymorphysms in intron regions of the b-tubulin family genes.

The multifunctional and essential role of these proteins is evident from the fact that some regions within the primary amino acid sequence are conserved across a range of species in the animal and plant kingdoms. Markers for this gene family thus possess unique characteristics for application across species, being amenable to exploitation using universal primers to amplify the first intron of different isotypes.

The utility of TBP has been demonstrated by its ability to discriminate between accessions and species of Lotus, Brassica, and Coffea. Comparing the results obtained by TBP and 14 SSR markers on individuals from 6 different cultivars of oilseedrape (B. napus L.) has shown good correlation between the data obtained from the two approaches, both in terms of phylogenetic relationships between cultivars and detected levels of intra-cultivar genetic variability.