Cross Species Polymerase Chain Reaction Primer in DNA Barcode

Abstract

Identification of forensic articles like carcasses or marketed products is difficult. Although recent molecular advancement provides use of fragments of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) as species level marker in all animals, yet primers are diverse among groups of animals. So, primer selection for any unstructured specimen is difficult. We explored possibility of cross species primer to amplify the DNA barcode fragment of COI for a native horse species (Equus caballus). Different barcode primers of common taxa are empirically tested in silico. Based on the critical criteria of DNA barcoding resultantly forward primer for Bird DNA barcoding and reverse primer for Fish DNA gave an in silico PCR product of 699 bp, also verified in vitro using genomic DNA extracted from hair samples. The sequence similarity and homology search in BOLD nucleotide database confirm specific identification. This study forecasts application of cross species primer to identify suspected biological sample in diverse arena.