Identification of Bursaphelenchus xylophilus by PCR amplification of ribosomal DNA

摘要

At present, the pine wilt disease is the most serious threat to pine forest in China. The detection system of the causal agent of the disease, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is urgently needed in the controlling and quarantine of the disease. But morphological characters of B. xylophilus and its closely related species, B. mucronatus are variable and cannot clearly identify the different isolates. In this paper, two practical PCR-based methods for discriminating between B. xylophilus and B. mucronatus were developed, and the ribosomal DNA (rDNA), containing the 5.8S gene, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region 1 and 2 were used as the target DNA sequence of identification.