SICARD, Nadine*; CORTHALS, Angelique; FEINSTEIN, Julie ; BOLNET, Carolle ; DESALLE, Rob ; Medgar Evers College ; American Museum of Natural History; American Museum of Natural History; Medgar Evers College ; American Museum of Natural History: Barcoding Whiptail Lizards (Cnemidophorus and Apidoscelis spp.) at the Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection.
DNA Barcoding is a technique that can help to discover, characterize, and distinguish species using short DNA sequence from a specific gene. Because of the decline of taxonomic experts, developing a system that utilizes DNA as a taxon (barcode) can help identify many species. The utility of barcoding rests on the two assumptions: 1) the genetic distances between individuals within a given species are very small, 2) the genetic distance between species are relatively large. These assumptions have not been tested for all groups of organisms. The aim of this work is to obtain a DNA- based identification system for the Whiptail Lizards (Cnemidophorus and Apidoscelis) using a single mitochondrial gene, the cytochrome C oxidase I (COI) and to see how closely the two species are related. In our experiment, we challenged the utility of barcoding when applied to these particular groups of organisms. DNA was extracted from 96 tissues (heart, liver, tail, nucleated blood) samples using the standard DNeasy protocol for animal tissue.PCR was then performed using universal COI primers. The cleaned PCR products were sequenced using Big Dye Chemistry and the ABI3730 automated sequencer. The sequenced data were annotated and corrected using Sequencher version 4.2. Of the 96 DNA samples that were successfully extracted, the polymerase chain reaction amplified 23 and meaningful sequences were obtained for 9 samples. Phylogenetic analysis were run in the software PAUP* using maximum parsimony. As a preliminary result, the two different species showed no differences in the COI barcoding indicating that the DNA barcoding may not be applicable to all species. Therefore patterns of genetic distance within groups should be carefully considered.
