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Sequence analysis of a few species of termites (Order: Isoptera) on the basis of partial characterization of COII gene

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Abstract

The present study was aimed to get the nucleotide sequences of a part of COII mitochondrial gene amplified from individuals of five species of Termites (Isoptera: Termitidae: Macrotermitinae). Four of them belonged to the genus Odontotermes (O. obesus, O. horni, O. bhagwatii and Odontotermes sp.) and one to Microtermes (M. obesi). Partial COII gene fragments were amplified by using specific primers. The sequences so obtained were characterized to calculate the frequencies of each nucleotide bases and a high A + T content was observed. The interspecific pairwise sequence divergence in Odontotermes species ranged from 6.5% to 17.1% across COII fragment. M. obesi sequence diversity ranged from 2.5 with Odontotermes sp. to 19.0% with O. bhagwatii. Phylogenetic trees drawn on the basis of distance neighbour-joining method revealed three main clades clustering all the individuals according to their genera and families.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Council of Scientific and Industrial research (CSIR), New Delhi, for financial support and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Kolkata, for species identification.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

    Ranbir Chander Sobti

  2. Department of Zoology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

    Mamtesh Kumari & Vijay Lakshmi Sharma

  3. National Bureau of Animal Genomic Resources, Karnal, Haryana, India

    Monika Sodhi & Manishi Mukesh

  4. National Centre of Cell Sciences, Pune, India

    Yogesh Shouche

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  1. Ranbir Chander Sobti
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Correspondence to Ranbir Chander Sobti.

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Sobti, R.C., Kumari, M., Sharma, V.L. et al. Sequence analysis of a few species of termites (Order: Isoptera) on the basis of partial characterization of COII gene. Mol Cell Biochem 331, 145–151 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11010-009-0152-z

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