Forensic identification of internal transcribed spacer region-targeting plant and fungal species by direct sequencing

Abstract

DOI: 10.3408 / jafst.814 ) Species identiˆcation of botanical and fungal evidences oŠer beneˆcial infor-mation in crime investigation. As these biological species are highly diverse and complex, their DNA sequence analysis is eŠective in the ˆeld of forensic science. In this study, the internal transcribed spacer ( ITS ) region on the ribosomal DNA of plant and fungal samples was examined as a targeting locus. For 30 plant and 9 fungal samples, direct sequencing was performed for both ITS1 and ITS2 region using modiˆed universal primers and M13 tag primers. Each resulting sequence was eval-uated by a nucleotide BLAST homology search. The top hits for sequence homology against each sample matched the actual species with almost 100  identity. However, homology search does not always result in sequence similarity / identity among closely-related species; therefore, results of homology