Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference
P64
New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Private Bag 3020, Rotorua, New Zealand
Plants have distinct genomes in their nucleus, chloroplast, and mitochondria. In contrast to angiosperms where organelle transmission is typically maternal, the chloroplast genome of gymnosperms is often inherited from the paternal parent. DNA marker systems capable of detecting polymorphisms in the chloroplast molecule would therefore be useful for studying paternity and pollen movement in gymnosperms. Short nucleotide repeats analogous to nuclear microsatellites, or simple sequence repeats (SSRs), have been identified from DNA sequence analysis of the chloroplast genome of Pinus thunbergii, and we have designed primers to amplify twenty of these chloroplast microsatellite loci (cpSSRs). Of these twenty SSR sites, seven proved to polymorphic in Pinus radiata. These seven loci have been combined in fluorescently labelled, multiplexed PCRs to generate informative chloroplast haplotypes resolved in a single lane on ABI 377 sequencers. These haplotypes are now used for fingerprinting, paternity analysis, pollen genotyping, and studying chloroplast diversity in Pinus radiata and other conifers.