Molecular studies of five species of butterflies (Lepidoptera : Insecta) through RAPD-PCR technique

摘要

The genomic DNA of five species of butterflies namely, Pieris canidia, Pieris brassicae, Ixias pyrene, Ixias marianne and Pontia daplidice belonging to the family Pieridae has been subjected to RAPD-PCR analysis with four decamer oligonucleotides i.e. P1, P2, P3 and P4. All of them produced discrete bands of,various lengths revealing genetic variations as well as similarities among various species of butterflies under study. Some species specific bands were obtained with these primers. With P1, a fragment of 570 base pairs was found in both the species of the genus Pieris. Similarly, with P3 two bands having the base pair lengths of 310 and 160 were obtained in the same genus. These can be considered as diagnostic bands for this genus. All the primers also produced species specific bands. The results were supported by the dendrograms plotted according to nearest neighbour analysis, which further revealed that P1 and P3 were more authentic as they resulted in clustering of males and females of each species.