A small group of scientists led by Dr Michelle van der Bank of the botany and biotechnology department at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) has launched an ambitious project to collect all the plants of the Kruger National Park and use DNA sequencing and barcoding techniques to study this rich flora.
DNA sequencing has becoming a popular tool to study organisms. In plants, it is used to study relationships, to track down the history of species diversification or to draw the “genealogical trees” of groups of organisms.
In 2004, the Consortium for the Barcode of Life launched an initiative to promote DNA barcoding, a process enabling the rapid and inexpensive identification of the estimated 10-million species on Earth.
The technique has been successfully applied to animals. However, in the case of plants, the search for short fragments of DNA that will act as a “barcode” has so far proved unsuccessful. Now scientists from 11 institutions are searching for the elusive gene that will allow them to barcode all 300 000 species of plants on Earth.
As part of this effort, Van der Bank and her team — Vincent Savolainen of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, United Kingdom, and three UJ postgraduate students, Olivier Maurin, Renaud Lahaye and Sylvie du Thoit — started collecting plants in the Kruger Park in September 2005. To date they have collected more than 1 600 specimens. This endeavour represents the most complete and recent inventory of the park’s flora. It is also the largest and most diverse sampling ever made for barcoding purposes in a protected area.
Samples are taken back to UJ where they are analysed, categorised and stored. DNA duplicates are then sent off to the Kruger National Park and other institutions such as Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Plans are under way to place this data on the Consortium for the Bar of Life website, where it will be available for other scientists.