Development of the species-specific multiplex PCR and DNA sequencing methods for rapid authentication of isatidis folium and its adulterants

Abstract

Isatis indigotica Fort. (family Cruciferae), is an herb widely used in traditional herbal medicine and its dried leave was named “ISATIDIS FOLIUM”. Baphicacanthus cusia (Ness) Bremek. and Polygonum tinctorium Ait. are commonly misused as ISATIDIS FOLIUM in Chinese Medicine pharmacy. For the purpose of being not misused, specific primers based on the sequence difference of chloroplast trnH-psbA intergenic spacer were designed and multiplex polymerase chain reaction method (multiplex PCR) was developed. In this study, 29 original herbal materials were analyzed and our results show that DNA size after multiplex PCR was able to distinguish variations between three herbs. DNA fragments of 464, 297, 170 base pairs (bps) were represented for I. indigotica and B. cusia and P. tinctorium, respectively. In conclusion, our investigations demonstrate that molecular identification method provides more accurate results for medicinal plants detection and good quality control of ISATIDIS FOLIUM.