Molecular characterization of medicinal and aromatic plants by 5S rRNA NTS and PCR RFLP- A mini review

The use of plants and plant products for medicine is being practiced from time immemorial. The advent of herbal drug technology has led to the production of medicines and pharmaceutical products from herbs. Secondary metabolites from plants are important economically as drugs, fragrances, pigments, food additives and pesticides. In order to protect consumers from adulteration and for conservation of the plants; authentication and identification of medicinal plants is essential. Traditionally, morphological, phytochemical and analytical techniques are used. In recent times molecular marker based methods are used widely. With the advent of PCR based techniques minute quantities of DNA in order of nanograms are sufficient for molecular analysis. These techniques are more advantageous than the classical morphology based or chemical and analytical methods. Recently the nontranscribed sequence (NTS) region of 5S rRNA has been employed for studying intra specific discrimination. In this short review an attempt has been made to study the use of 5S -rRNA NTS region for molecular fingerprinting in plants