POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION AMPLIFICATION OF THE RUBISCO SMALL-SUBUNIT GENES AND THEIR NOVEL APPLICATION TO PLANT-TISSUE IDENTIFICATION

Degenerate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers and specific PCR co nditions have been developed for the selective amplification of a poly morphic region of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (RuBisCo) smal l subunit (ssu) genes. Reliable amplification has been achieved for ge nes from more than 20 plant species from a variety of taxonomic groups . Analysis of Nicotiana species provides strong evidence that the test loci are polymorphic at the interspecies level but show little polymo rphic variation at the intraspecies level. This specific multilocus PC R approach provides a powerful counterpart to random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (R FLP) analysis for the identification of plant tissues.