Molecular phylogeny of Artemisia species based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of 18S-26S rDNA in Ordu Province of Turkey

Abstract

Economically important representatives of the Artemisia genus have wide application in pharmaceutics, landscape architecture and agriculture. The aim of this study was to phylogenetically analyse the 18S-26S rDNA, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) nucleotide sequences of 19 Artemisia samples collected from Ordu Province of Turkey. Analyses were conducted using neighbour-joining (NJ), maximum-parsimony (MP) and maximum-likelihood (ML) algorithms. Our analysis revealed two unique haplotypes within our samples, including a rare one (Haplotype-I, represented by a single sample) and a common one (Haplotype-II, represented by 18 samples). In all trees, both of our haplotypes appeared in the same lineage with Artemisia sylvatica, Artemisia argyi and Artemisia verlotiorum. Although rDNA-ITS is known to be a variative marker, oddly it was highly conserved in Artemisia, which is why we used this marker to determine the phylogenetic affiliation of the analysed plants.