Identification of molecular markers for flower characteristics in Catharanthus roseus producing anticancer compounds

Catharanthus roseus or vinca produces over 130 TIAs with pharmaceutical value. Two of them, namely vinblastine (VB) and vincristine (VC), are species-specific and extensively used in anticancer chemotherapeutics. To detect C. roseus genotypes abundant in desired TIAs, contrasting genotypes should be analyzed via marker-assisted selection (MAS) to avoid analytical quantitation. A trustable morphological marker, like a flower characteristic, will lessen the selection efforts in improving such a quantitative trait. The present work aims at detecting PCR-based molecular markers, i.e., RAPD, ISSR and AFLP, for eight C. roseus cultivars for flower characteristics as possible markers for high levels of VC and VB. The study indicated high levels of polymorphism generated across different type of marker; AFLP was the most powerful, while ISSR was the least. The polymorphism information content (PIC), average of heterozygosity (He), the effective multiplex ratio (E), and the marker index (MI) revealed that data of ISSR is the least trustable. The overall results separated the cultivars with white versus those with pink colors, on one hand, and versus colored flowers, on the other hand. A number of 79 cultivar-specific markers were detected across type of marker. Other 100 markers for important flower characteristics were also detected. They are white petal, colored petal, pink petal, petal white center and yellow flower eye center. The highest number of flower trait markers was scored during AFLP analysis (65), while the lowest was scored during RAPD analysis (14). Recent efforts indicated that some of these markers can be linked to the levels of the anticancer compounds VC and VB in C. roseus. [F.M. El-Domyati , A.M. Ramadan, N.O. Gadalla, S. Edris, A.M. Shokry, S.M. Hassan , S.E. Hassanien, M.N. Baeshen, N.H. Hajrah, M.A. Al-Kordy, O.A. Abuzinadah, A.S.M. AlHajar, C.C. Akoh and A. Bahieldin. Identification of molecular markers for flower characteristics in Catharanthus roseus producing anticancer compounds. Life Sci J 2012;9(4):5949-5960] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 892