Abstract
Origanum L. (Lamiaceae) is an important genus of medicinal and aromatic plants used since ancient times as culinary herbs and remedies in traditional medicine. Although it is a relatively small genus, intra-generic species delineation, as well as its inter-generic relationships within tribe Mentheae, are still poorly understood. High resolution melting (HRM) analysis, coupled with microsatellite markers (SSRs), could facilitate the molecular identification and characterization of certain genotypes more efficiently and relatively faster when compared to other analytical methods. In this study, 38 Origanum samples corresponding to six Origanum taxa (O. dictamnus, O. majorana, O. onites, O. scabrum, O. sipyleum, and O. vulgare subsp. hirtum) were analyzed, using six microsatellite loci. Our goal was to molecularly identify and discriminate among the selected samples and to evaluate the ability of the HRM technique as an analytical tool for the discrimination of Origanum species from Greece. The temperature-shifted melting curves produced by the HRM analysis, resulted in 98 unique HRM profiles, which enabled the discrimination of the Origanum genotypes studied. According to the similarity dendrogram based on the HRM profiles, six unique clusters were formed, each one corresponding to a single taxon. In conclusion, HRM genotyping provided a fast, cost-effective method, well suited for the molecular characterization and identification of Origanum taxa and for the authentication of the original genetic material.
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The experimental data are available upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Drs. Elias Anastasopoulos, Eleftherios Kalpoutzakis, Aris Zografidis, Ms. Spyridoula Christopoulou and Mrs. Maria Tsakiri for collection and identification of plant material.
Funding
We acknowledge support of this work by the project “PlantUP” (MIS 5002803) which is implemented under the Action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure”, funded by the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (NSRF 2014–2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).
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Charikleia Papaioannou and Konstantina Zeliou contributed to the experimental part, data analysis, literature search and drafted the manuscript. Panayiotis Trigas contributed to drafting and critical reading of the manuscript. Vasileios Papasotiropoulos designed the study, supervised the experiments, contributed to drafting and critical reading of the manuscript. All the authors have read the final manuscript and approved the submission.
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Papaioannou, C., Zeliou, K., Trigas, P. et al. High Resolution Melting (HRM) Genotyping in the Genus Origanum: Molecular Identification and Discrimination for Authentication Purposes. Biochem Genet 58, 725–737 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-020-09970-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-020-09970-1