RAPD analysis of Lycium barbarum medicine in Taiwan market

In this study, we investigated Lycium barbarum, a Chinese medicine sold on the Taiwan market, using RAPD analysis. Sixty oligonucleotide primers were used to screen twenty randomly selected samples in the analysis. Total DNA extracted from the fruit of the medicine material was used as template in the PCR reaction. Four primers: OPD-15, OPG-15, OPT-12 and OPT-17, showed distinct polymorphic patterns, but others exhibited profiles nearly identical to the other samples used in the study. We found that only two RAPD fingerprinting types of these primers were outlined from twenty collected Lycium samples. Fifteen samples showed the first type of profiles while only five samples resulted of the second type. A low genetic diversity among the Lycium barbarum samples was revealed by RAPD analysis.