Abstract
The analysis of nonhuman biological evidence both animal and botanical to find out the correct species of a sample comes as a great help to crime investigators. Particularly, forensic botany may be useful in many criminal and civil cases, e.g., for linking an individual to a crime scene or physical evidence to a geographic location, or tracking marijuana distribution patterns.
Despite many molecular techniques for species identification so far applied, botanical evidences are still overlooked by forensic scientists due to the lack of reproducible and efficient protocols standardized across a wide range of different organisms and among different laboratories.
Recently, the term “DNA barcoding” has been coined to describe the use of a short gene sequence from a standardized region of the genome as a molecular tool for species identification. DNA barcodes have been successfully applied to a number of animal groups and introduced in forensic science with the application of the mitochondrial gene COI. Building on this success, ongoing investigations have searched for the best barcode to apply to all land plants. Here we describe the basic protocol based on amplification and sequence analysis of barcoding markers for land plants considering the latest developments of Plant DNA barcoding Project. The aim of this chapter is to provide forensic scientists an accurate and reliable tool for assigning unidentified botanical specimens to the correct species as powerful mainstay in investigations, increasing the contributions from nonhuman DNA to forensics.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Tsai LC, Yu YC, Hsieh HM, Wang JC, Linacre A, Lee JC (2006) Species identification using sequences of the trnL intron and the trnL-trnF IGS of chloroplast genome among popular plants in Taiwan. Forensic Sci Int 164, 193–200
Tsai LC, Yu YC, Hsieh HM, Liu KL, Linacre A, Lee JC (2008) Bidens identification using the noncoding regions of chloroplast genome and nuclear ribosomal DNA. Forensic Sci Int Genet 2, 35–40
Ward J, Gilmore SR, Robertson J, Peakall R, (2009) A Grass Molecular Identification System for Forensic Botany: A Critical Evaluation of the Strengths and Limitations. J Forensic Sci 54, 1254–1260
Hebert PDN, Cywinska A, Ball SL, de Waard JR (2003) Biological identifications through DNA barcodes. Proc R Soc Lond B 270, 313–321
Savolainen V, Cowan RS, Vogler AP, Roderick GK, Lane R (2005) Towards writing the encyclopaedia of life: an introduction to DNA barcoding. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 360, 1805–1811
Dawnay N, Ogden R, McEwing R, Carvalho GR, Thorpe RS (2007) Validation of the barcoding gene COI for use in forensic genetic species identification. Forensic Sci Int 173, 1–6
Ferri G, Alù M, Corradini B, Licata M, Beduschi G (2009) Species identification through DNA “barcodes”. Genet Test Mol Biomarkers 13, 421–426
Benson D A, Karsch-Mizrachi I, Lipman D J, Ostell J, Sayers EW (2010) GenBank. Nucleic Acids Res, 38, D46–D51
Cowan RS, Chase MW, Kress JW, Savolainen V (2006) 300 000 species to identify: problems, progress and prospects in DNA barcoding of land plants. Taxon 55, 611–616
Erickson DL, Spouge J, Resch A, Weigt LA, Kress WJ (2008) DNA barcoding in land plants: developing standards to quantify and maximize success. Taxon 57, 1304–1316
Fazekas AJ, Kesanakurti PR, Burgess KS, Percy DM, Graham SW et al (2009) Are plant species inherently harder to discriminate than animal species using DNA barcoding markers? Mol Ecol Notes 9, 130–139
Coyle HM, Lee CL, Lee HC, Lin WY, Palmbach TM (2005) Forensic botany: using plant evidence to aid in forensic death investigation. Croat Med J 46 (4), 606–612
Coyle HM, Ladd C, Palmbach T, Lee HC (2001) The green revolution: botanical contributions to forensic and drug enforcement. Croat Med J 42, 340–345
Virtanen V, Korpelainen H, Kostamo K (2007) Forensic botany: usability of bryophyte material in forensic studies. Forensic Sci Int 172, 161–163
Bock JH, Norris DO (1997) Forensic botany: an under-utilized resource. J Forensic Sci 42, 364–367
Kress JW, Wurdack KJ, Zimmer EA, Weigt LA, Janzen DH (2005) Use of DNA barcodes to identify flowering plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102, 8369–8374
Chase MW, Cowan RS, Hollingsworth PM et al (2007) A proposal for a standardised protocol to barcode all land plants. Taxon 56, 295–299
Fazekas AJ, Burgess KS, Kesanakurti PR et al (2008) Multiple multilocus DNA barcodes from the Plastid Genome discriminate plant species equally well. PloS ONE 3, e2802 doi:101371/journalpone0002802
CBOL Plant Working group (2009) A DNA barcode for land plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106, 12794–12797
Ferri G, Alù M, Corradini B, Beduschi G (2009) Forensic botany: species identification of botanical trace evidence using a multigene barcoding approach. Int J Legal Med 123, 395–401
Altschul SF, Gish W, Miller W, Myers EW, and Lipman DJ (1990) Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. J Mol Biol 215, 403–410
McGinnis S, and Madden TL (2004) BLAST: at a core of a powerful and diverse set of sequence analysis tools. Nucleic Acids Res 32, W20–W5
Ladunga I (2009) Finding similar nucleotide sequences using network BLAST searches. Curr Protoc Bioinformatics Chapter 3:Unit 33
Ross HA, Murugan S, and Li WL (2008) Testing the reliability of genetic methods of species identification via simulation. Syst Biol 57(2), 216–230
Ratnasingham S, Hebert PD (2007) BOLD: the barcode of life data system. (http://wwwbarcodinglifeorg) Mol Ecol Notes 7(3), 355–364
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Ferri, G., Corradini, B., Alù, M. (2012). Capillary Electrophoresis of Multigene Barcoding Chloroplast Markers for Species Identification of Botanical Trace Evidence. In: Alonso, A. (eds) DNA Electrophoresis Protocols for Forensic Genetics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 830. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-461-2_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-461-2_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-61779-460-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-61779-461-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols