UTILIZATION OF INTERNAL TRANSCRIBED SPACER (ITS) AS A MOLECULAR MARKER FOR PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIP OF Solanaceae FAMILY

Solanaceae family is considered one of the major plant families providing food. Studies based on DNA and RNA molecular markers are more precise, reliable and powerful to assess the relationships between species also between genera in the same family. ITS sequences have been broadly used in the inference of phylogenetic hypotheses and in molecular evolution studies of plants, because it is variable, represent point mutations and insertions/deletions (indels). Specific ITS fragments were produced using the universal primer through seven sample of Solanaceae. Purified fragments were sequenced and each sequence was aligned individually at BLAST to confirm each species and to determine its relation to other sequence. Multiple Sequence alignment was done using Clustal Omega program for the seven sequences, and phylogenetic relationship showed that Potato was closely related to Tomato as they were grouped in one main cluster. Whereas Eggplant was related to both type of pepper (Chili and Bell) and was grouped in another main cluster. The Ground Cherry was separated alone in the third main cluster. Finally, ten related sequences picked from each alignment were deduced from BLAST to make the multiple alignments for the seven studied samples with other species of Solanaceae family.