DNA FINGERPRINTING

Medicinal plants have been used universally since ancient days to sustain health and to treat diseases. However, adulteration and use of specious materials as substitutes have become a major apprehension for users and industry for reasons of safety and efficacy. Therefore, authentication of medicinal plants is of utmost importance. Morphological, anatomical, chemical and DNA markers solve the problem by differentiating the genuine material from the adulterants, substitutes and spurious drugs.

DNA markers use nucleotide sequences to identify species; it takes preference over the other two markers being not age dependent, tissue specific and having a higher discriminating power. Therefore, characterization of plants with such markers is an ideal approach for identification of medicinal plant species and populations/varieties of the same species. Availability of certified taxonomic specimens in herbaria is certainly required for unambiguous confirmation through final visual comparison and analysis.

Fingerprint analysis approach is the most potent tool for quality control of herbal medicines because of its accuracy and reliability. Fingerprinting is a process that determines the concentrations of a set of characteristic chemical Substances in an herb. Based on the conception of phyto equivalence, the chromatographic and DNA fingerprints of herbal medicines could be utilized for addressing the problem of quality control of herbal medicines. This article will review advanced techniques of DNA fingerprinting in standardization of herbals.

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PHARMA AND YOUR HEALTH

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