New molecular resources to study the medicinal plant Centella asiatica

Centella asiatica is an important traditional and industrial crop in Madagascar that is collected in the wild for its specific medicinal properties. Ony Rakotondralambo is actually preparing a pHD thesis at the University of Antananarivo entitled Centella asiatica (L.) Urban: biology, genetic diversity, conservation and exploitation management in Madagascar. Here, in the UMR-AGAP facilities, we construct new SSR enriched library and set up microsatellite markers for the study of genetic diversity of C. asiatica in Madagascar.

  • Premise of the study: Microsatellite markers for Centella asiatica, an important medicinal herb, were developed and characterized to promote genetic and molecular studies.
  • Methods and Results: A GA/GT-enriched genomic library was constructed from an accession from Madagascar. Roughly 75% of the 768 clones of the enriched library contained microsatellites. Eighty sequences containing microsatellites were obtained from 96 positive clones. Specific primers were designed for 20 loci, and 17 of them displayed polymorphism when screened across 17 C. asiatica accessions, with an average of 4.3 alleles per locus. The observed and expected heterozygosity values averaged 0.114 and 0.379, respectively.
  • Conclusions: This is the first report constructing an enriched genomic library and dentifying microsatellite markers from C. asiatica. These 17 polymorphic microsatellite markers are a useful resource for this plant, applicable for diversity studies, pedigree analyses, and genetic mapping.

Published: 04/04/2012