No abstract

Interest on the genus Camelina has recently increased due to the biofuel, or jet fuel, potential of the oil extracted from seeds of the cultivated species Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz. While our knowledge on C. sativa is constantly augmenting, only few studies have been performed on the other species of the genus, which could be a potentially useful material for the genetic improvement of C. sativa. The genus Camelina consists of 11 species, but only six (C. sativa, C. microcarpa, C. alyssum, C. rumelica, C. hispida and C. laxa) could be retrieved from germplasm banks to carry out genomic fingerprinting studies based on the use of the cTBP molecular marker. Each species, with the exception of C. alyssum that is proposed to be a subspecies of C. sativa, shows a distinct cTBP profile resulting from multiple DNA length polymorphisms present in the second intron of the members of the β-tubulin gene family. In contrast to the high level of genetic diversity detected among the six Camelina species, low variability is observed among and within the accessions of the same species, except for C. hispida that is characterized by an intra-accession high number of cTBP polymorphic bands. In addition, cTBP is also able to identify incorrectly classified accessions and provide information on the ploidy level of each species.

No abstract

There seem to be a certain degree of reluctance in accepting ILP-based methods as part of the range of molecular markers that are classically used for plant genotyping. Indeed, since DNA polymorphism results from difference in length of fragments amplified from specific gene loci, not anonymous sequences, the number of markers that can be generated is sometime inadequate for classical phylogeny studies. Yet, ILP-based markers have many other useful advantages that should not go neglected. We support this statement by presenting a large variety of data we have been collecting for a long while regarding the use of cTBP, an ILP marker based on difference in length of the introns present within the members of the plant beta-tubulin gene family

The Tubulin Based Polymorphism (TBP) method was used to genotype olive cultivars of different origin and to produce short-size cultivar-specific molecular probes. Both the first and the second intron of the members of the olive β-tubulin gene family were exploited as sources of DNA polymorphism.Compared with the data obtained with the use of a set of 11 SSR markers selected from an Olea europea L. database, TBP is shown to provide similar, if not better, information about the polymorphic content of the olive genomes, releasing, at the same time, a simple and discriminatory DNA barcode specific for any of the analyzed cultivars. Such a barcode is the source for the preparation of variety specific molecular probes.