• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.351-354
• /
• 2017

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) is recognized as a potential source of protein and other nutrients. The genus Vigna includes 100 wild species of plants. Especially, Vigna unguiculata includes annual cowpeas (ssp. unguiculata) and ten wild perennial subspecies. DNA sequence of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region was determined for Vigna sinensis, one of native plant, which was found in recent but thought to have gone extinct in Korea. The seeds of Vigna sinensis used in this study were donated from Dong-Young Jo. The DNA sequence of ITS-5.8S-ITS2 for Vigna sinensis obtained from this study was deposited as Vigna sinensis AY195581 on GenBank of NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). We investigated the sequence-based phylogenetic relationships of plants related and clarified its taxonomical position. DNA similarities among subspecies including Vigna unguiculata showed the range 98 to 100% in sequence-based phylogenetic analysis using total 507 base pairs of ITS1, 5.8S and ITS2. Vigna unguiculata and subspecies were grouped independently as one cluster from other Vigna species used in the phylogenetic analysis. In this study, based on the phylogenetic analysis using the ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 sequence of Vigna sinensis, it may be concluded to be classified to one of Vigna unguiculata substrains.