An effective and low-cost method for DNA extraction from herbal drugs of Rheum tanguticum (polygonaceae)

Abstract

Rhubarb is an important traditional Chinese herbal drug with high secondary metabolites that interfere with DNA extraction procedures and downstream applications, such as DNA restriction and amplification. An effective and low-cost protocol for isolating genomic DNA from root of Rheum tanguticum is described in this paper. It involved a modified CTAB method with distilled water pretreating samples. The A260/A280 absorbance ratio of extracted DNA, free from polysaccharide,
polyphenols and tannins contaminants, ranged from 1.85 to 2.0 within the high level of purity. The DNA preparations were found suitable for analyses with restriction enzyme digestion and inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR). This method is helpful for further studies on rhubarb at molecular level and is more cost-effective than commercial kit.