Identification of plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids based on DNA barcoding and TaqMan real-time PCR assay

Abstract An intentional or inadvertent mixing of plant materials containing ephedrine alkaloids, especially Ephedra , is illegal. In order to better detect alkaloids in export and smuggling, DNA barcoding combined with a TaqMan real-time PCR-based assay were used this study. We collected 201 samples from 18 species belonging four genera distributed three families amplify two markers, internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) psb A -trn H. 175 ITS2 sequences 136 A- trn H obtained. Alignments the neighbor-joining tree indicated that showed discrimination than addition, based on sequence comparison region species, sets primer/probes designed using PCR platform. sensitivity test above primer/probe specific sensitive (as little as 0.0050 ng/μL target DNA) identify alkaloids. Hence, combination novel technique are promising tools for identification It beneficial standardize market circulation detection