A universal barcode system for land plants would be a valuable resource, with potential utility in fields as diverse as ecology, floristics, law enforcement and industry. However, the application of plant barcoding has been constrained by a lack of consensus regarding the most variable and technically practical DNA region(s). We compared eight candidate plant barcoding regions from the plastome...

Ocotea bilocellata Baitello, D.B.O.S.Cardoso & P.L.R.Moraes, a species of Lauraceae that is new to science and from the Atlantic rain forest state São Paulo, Brazil, described illustrated. The newly does not fit in any traditionally circumscribed disporangiate genera; rather, we show it phylogenetically placed within minarum group, as revealed by nuclear ribosomal ITS plastid psbA–trnH sequ...

Species of genus Tripterygium (Celastraceae) have attracted much attention owing to their excellent effect on treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. However, due to high market demand causing overexploitation, natural populations of genus Tripterygium have rapidly declined. Tripterygium medicinal materials are mainly collected from the wild, making the quality of medicinal materials uns...

All tRNA(His) possess an essential extra G(-1) guanosine residue at their 5' end. In eukaryotes after standard processing by RNase P, G(-1) is added by a tRNA(His) guanylyl transferase. In prokaryotes, G(-1) is genome-encoded and retained during maturation. In plant mitochondria, although trnH genes possess a G(-1) we find here that both maturation pathways can be used. Indeed, tRNA(His) with o...

The identification of flowering plants using DNA barcoding proposed in last decades has slowly gained ground Africa, where it been successfully used to elucidate the systematics and ecology several plant groups, understand their evolutionary history. Existing inferences on effectiveness identify African trees are mostly based lowland forests, whereas adjacent montane forests significantly diffe...