OPTIMIZATION OF DNA ISOLATION AND ANALYSIS OF GENETIC VARIABILITY IN MEDICINAL PLANT CISSUS BY RAPD-PCR TECHNIQUE

Cissus quadrangularis is the plant of Vitaceae family and reported to have widely applicable medicinal properties. The present study was carried out to optimize the method of genomic DNA extraction from Cissus quadrangularis and to determine genetic variability among four different accessions of Cissus. For DNA extraction, five Different procedures were tested, among which, the protocol of modified Doyle and Doyle (1990) gave good yield as well as consistent RAPD profiles with the random primer, and hence used for all further studies. The genetic variability among accessions of Cissus was determined using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) profiles. Similarities of profiles were determined using the algorithm of Jaccard, and UPGMA and neighbor joining trees were generated from the similarity data. Twelve RAPD primers produced a total of 79 bands, with an average of bands per primer pair, of which 62 were polymorphic. Similarity, index between all the accessions is more than 0.50, yet UPGMA cluster analyses of the SM matrix confidently separate four accessions. Optimized methods for DNA extraction and RAPD analysis for Cissus can be helpful in further molecular as well as genomic studies.