• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.32-35
• /
• 2008

The Suminoe oyster, Crassostrea ariakensis, occurs in estuaries where rivers meet seawater. In Korea, it is one of the most popular fisheries resources in the Nam River and Sumjin River. However, the genetic identification of this species has been questioned, because specimens are often mis-identified as other species. To identify the species, we conducted polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the internal transcribed spacer-1 (ITS-1) region, followed by digestion with the restriction enzyme HaeIII. Restriction profiles for oysters collected from Korea, Japan, and China (north and south) were determined by comparing the PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns of the ITS-1 regions. Our study verified that the oysters collected from Korea were C. ariakensis based on the PCR-RFLP patterns. These results emphasize the value of molecular markers for identifying morphologically uncertain species.

• The Korean Journal of Malacology
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.153-160
• /
• 2009

Pisidium (Neopisidium) coreanum is a freshwater snail and lives in spring water near mountain areas. Interestingly, this snail has been traditionally regarded as medicinal food, and thus has been used as folk remedies for healing broken bones. Recently, alpha classification on Pisidium (Neopisidium) coreanum through redescription has been conducted. However, not much attention has been made in beta classification. In this study, we performed the beta classification based on metallothionein (MT) genes found from various organisms. To this end, the complete cDNA sequences were obtained from the Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) sequencing project of Pisidium (Neopisidium) coreanum. The coding region (315 bp) encoded an amino acid sequence of 105 residues. The combined results from BLAST analyses, multiple sequence alignment and molecular phylogenetic study of Pc-MT gene indicate that Pisidium (Neopisidium) coreanum has similarity to freshwater bivalve such as Dreissena polymorpha (zebra mussel), Unio tumidus (swollen river mussel) and Crassostrea ariakensis (suminoe oyster).