Phylogenetic Relationship among Several Korean Coastal Red Tide Dinoflagellates Based on their rDNA Internal Transcribed Spacer Sequences

The nucleotide sequences of the internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS1 and ITS2) of ribosomal DNA (rDNA), and the 5.85 rRNA gene, have been determined for 13 strains of dinoflagellates in order to analyze the phylo-genetic relationship. The DNA sequences contained considerable variation in the ITS regions, but little in the 5.85 rDNA. In addition, the ITS1 was more variable than the ITS2 in all species examined. The nucleotide length of this region varied from 519 bp to 596 bp depending on the taxa. The investigated taxa were divided into three large groups based on the ITS length, i. e., a group with short ITS region (A. fraterculus and Alexandrium sp.), a with ITS region group (P. micans, P. minimum and P. triestinum) and a with ITS region group (G. impudicum, C. polykrikoides, G. sanguineum, G. catenatum and H. triquetra). The relationship between nucleotide length of ITS1 and that of ITS2 was negative, whereas G+C content and nucleotide length showed positive correlation. In phylogenetic analyses producing NJ trees, the topology was similar cluster and clearly divided the taxa into three groups based on 5.8S rDNA that were similar to those based on morphological characteristics. In particular, G. impudicum was more closely related to G. catenatum than to C. polykrikoides using phylogenetic analysis. From this study, we chew that the length of ITS region contributes to discriminate Korean harmful algal species and ITS analysis is a useful method for resolving the systematic relationships of dinoflagellates.