MOLECULAR IDENTIFICATION OF THE MEDICINAL PLANT JUSTICIA GENDARUSSA USING MATK GENE

L. Sarvananda, Samer Salim Abed Abed, Jijy Rohini, Balasubramanian Sathyamurthy*

ABSTRACT

Herbal plants play a major role in the development of modern civilization. Justicia gendarussa is an interesting example for traditional plant with medicinal values and have been proved by many research works. The present study which is focused on the Molecular characterization for the plant Justicia Gendarussa using Matk gene shows that the DNA isolated from was isolated from Justicia gendarussa has purity of purity 1.8. The purified DNA obtained was amplified using a matK primer. The amplified product of matK gene was found in the region of 750 – 1000 base pairs corresponding to the ladder. The PCR product using two sets of reverse primers were obtained and the result showed that reverse 1 primer was able to amplify the CO I gene better than reverse 2 primer. This plant is found to have a broad spectrum of activities due to the presence of active constituents like alkaloids, flavus compounds, phenolic compounds, steroids, carbohydrate, carotenoids and terpenoids. Various studies explored this plant has various pharmacological actions like antioxidant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety, antiangiogenic, antiarthritic, prevent damage to the liver, anticancer, active against bacteria, destroying fungi and anthelmintic. The study on the mechanism of action of this plant leaves could be useful for the development of commercial drugs.

Keywords: Barcodes, COI gene, sequence alignment.