Alpinia belongs to a large genus with many species found in Peninsular Malaysia. Several species of Alpinia exhibit important medicinal potential. However, progressive studies on the genus Alpinia were hampered by difficulties encountered in species identification. With the advancement achieved in genomic technology, more sensitive tools such as DNA barcoding were developed, which can be used for species identification. Internal Transcribe Spacer 2 (ITS2) is a DNA barcode which has proven to be a promising tool for species identification. The criterions of ITS2 efficacy namely universality and efficacy for species identification were tested on Alpinia species collected from Peninsular Malaysia. The results showed that a success rate of 96.97% was achieved using ITS2 for screening 11 species of Alpinia and an outgroup sample (Zingiber specatabile). Combined with 15 additional sequences from the Genbank for five Alpinia species, ITS2 demonstrated high species identification efficacy with 88.2% of species identified using phylogenetic and distance analysis. The analysis was further improved with the use of ITS2 secondary structure. The results of both criterions demonstrated the ability of ITS2 to successfully discriminate Alpinia species, which will help to improve species identification of Alpinia species in Peninsular Malaysia.

中文翻译：

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DNA 条形码内转录间隔区 2 (ITS 2) 在马来西亚半岛高山姜物种系统发育研究中的功效。

高山姜属于马来西亚半岛发现的一个大属，有许多种。高良姜的几种物种表现出重要的药用潜力。然而，由于物种鉴定遇到困难，对高山姜属的研究进展受到阻碍。随着基因组技术的进步，开发了更灵敏的工具，例如 DNA 条形码，可用于物种鉴定。内部转录间隔区 2 (ITS2) 是一种 DNA 条形码，已被证明是一种很有前途的物种鉴定工具。ITS2功效标准，即物种鉴定的普遍性和有效性，在马来西亚半岛采集的高山姜属物种上进行了测试。结果表明，利用ITS2对11种良姜属及其外类群样本（Zingiber spatabile）进行筛选，成功率为96.97% 。结合 Genbank 中 5 个高良姜物种的 15 个附加序列，ITS2 表现出很高的物种鉴定效率，使用系统发育和距离分析鉴定出 88.2% 的物种。使用 ITS2 二级结构进一步改进了分析。两项标准的结果都证明了ITS2成功区分高山姜物种的能力，这将有助于提高马来西亚半岛高山姜物种的物种识别。