• Proceedings of the Korean Aquaculture Society Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.132-133
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• 2003

The marine dinoflagellate genus Alexandrium comprise PSP producing A. acatenella, A. angustitabuzatum, A. catenella, A. fundyense, A. minutum, A. ostenfezdii, A. tamiyavanichii and A. tamarense. In monitoring toxic Alexandrium, rapid and exact species identification is one of the significant prerequisite work, however we have suffered confusion of species definition in Alexandrium. To surmount this problem, we chose DNA probing, which has long been used as an alternative for conventional identification methods, primarily relying on morphological approaches using microscope in microbial field. Oligonucleotide DNA probes targeting rRNA or rDNA have been commonly used in diverse studies to detect and enumerate cells concerned as a culture-indetendent powerful tool. Despite of the massive literature on the HAB species containing Alexandrium, application of DNA probing for species identification and detection has been limited to a few documents. DNA probes of toxic A. tamarense, A. catenella and A. tamiyavanichii, and non-toxic A. affine, A. fraterculus, A. insuetum and A. pseudogonyaulax were designed from LSU rDNA D1-D2, and applied to whole cell-FISH. Each DNA probes reacted only the targeted Alexandrium cells with very high species-specificity within Alexandrium. The probes could detect each targeted cells obtained from the natural sea water samples without cross-reactivity. Labeling intensity varied in the growth stage, this showed that the contents of probe-targeted cellular rRNA decreased with reduced growth rate. Double probe TAMID2S1 achieved approximately two times higher fluorescent intensity than that with single probe TAMID2. This double probe did not cross-react with any kinds of microorganisms in the natural sea waters. Therefore we can say that in whole-cell FISH procedure this double DNA probe successfully labeled targeted A. tamiyavanichii without cross-reaction with congeners and diverse natural bio-communities.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.74-80
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• 2001

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.