TY - JOUR A1 - Bratzel, Fabian A1 - Heller, Sascha A1 - Cyrannek, Nadine A1 - Paule, Juraj A1 - Leme, Elton M. C. A1 - Loreth, Anna A1 - Nowotny, Annika A1 - Kiefer, Markus A1 - Till, Walter A1 - Barfuss, Michael H. J. A1 - Lexer, Christian A1 - Koch, Marcus A. A1 - Zizka, Georg T1 - The low-copy nuclear gene Agt1 as a novel DNA barcoding marker for Bromeliaceae T2 - BMC Plant Biology N2 - Background: The angiosperm family Bromeliaceae comprises over 3.500 species characterized by exceptionally high morphological and ecological diversity, but a very low genetic variation. In many genera, plants are vegetatively very similar which makes determination of non flowering bromeliads difficult. This is particularly problematic with living collections where plants are often cultivated over decades without flowering. DNA barcoding is therefore a very promising approach to provide reliable and convenient assistance in species determination. However, the observed low genetic variation of canonical barcoding markers in bromeliads causes problems. Result. In this study the low-copy nuclear gene Agt1 is identified as a novel DNA barcoding marker suitable for molecular identification of closely related bromeliad species. Combining a comparatively slowly evolving exon sequence with an adjacent, genetically highly variable intron, correctly matching MegaBLAST based species identification rate was found to be approximately double the highest rate yet reported for bromeliads using other barcode markers. Conclusion. In the present work, we characterize Agt1 as a novel plant DNA barcoding marker to be used for barcoding of bromeliads, a plant group with low genetic variation. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive marker sequence dataset for further use in the bromeliad research community. KW - DNA barcoding KW - Low-copy nuclear gene KW - Plant collections KW - Bromeliads Y1 - 2020 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/57522 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-575227 SN - 1471-2229 N1 - This article has been updated to add the correct version of additional file 1. VL - 20 IS - Article number: 111 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER -