Metal Contaminated Soil

To reclaim these contaminated soils plants are grown (phytoremediation). While the plants used for phytoremediation on contaminated soil do rehabilitate the site, there may be a chance for changes in their DNA due to metal stress. This needs to be characterized, but there are few problems encountered during isolation and amplification of DNA from plants grown in metal contaminated sites. The metals could interfere with Taq DNA polymerase during amplification. Plants grown in this environment could contain inhibitory metabolites. Moreover, the contaminating RNA that precipitates along with genomic DNA could also cause suppression of PCR amplification, by improper priming of DNA templates. In recent years, molecular markers are increasingly being deployed due to study mutational changes. Among the different molecular markers, some are relatively cheaper and simple to use. One such marker is Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), which is a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) based DNA marker. This assay is based on the amplification of genomic DNA with single primer of arbitrary nucleotide sequence. RAPD is an inexpensive and rapid method, not requiring any information regarding the genome of plant, and has been widely used to ascertain the genetic diversity. It requires only small amount of genomic DNA and can produce high levels of polymorphism and may facilitate more effective diversity analysis in plants and it provides information that can help to define the distinctiveness of species and phylogenetic relationship.

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Last date updated on September, 2024