Oligonucleotide fingerprinting reveals various probe-dependent levels of informativeness in chickpea (<i>Cicer arietinum</i>)

Abstract

Synthetic oligonucleotides complementary to simple repetitive DNA sequences were used to detect inter- and intra-specific polymorphisms in a leguminous crop plant (chickpea, Cicer arietinum) and its wild relatives. All the investigated repetitive motifs [(GACA) 4 , (GATA) 4 , (GTG) 5 , (CA) 8 , (TCC) 5 , (GGAT) 4 , and (AGTTT) 4 ] were abundantly present and polymorphic in the chickpea genome. Different probes revealed different levels of variability. Whereas species-specific banding patterns were obtained with the (GTG) 5 probe, other probes revealed differences between accessions, or even individuals. The somatic multilocus patterns were stable for all probes.Key words: genetic polymorphism, simple repetitive sequences, DNA fingerprinting, synthetic oligonucleotide probes.