Molecular Grouping of Grateloupia Tissues Collected Along Chinese Coast and Microsatellite Diversity Analysis of G. asiatica Molecular Grouping of Grateloupia Tissues Collected Along Chinese Coast and Microsatellite Diversity Analysis of G. asiatica

Genus Grateloupia is one of the most speciose genera in family Halymeniales. It is also one of the sources for natural materials, food and medicine. With different environments, Grateloupia change their morphological characteristics, making their morphological identification very difficult. In addition, few of the species diversity in this genus has been described before. In this study, phylogenetic analysis based on rbc L gene sequence was employed to group Grateloupia collected from three locations along Chinese coast. The microsatellites were also used to evaluate their genetic diversity. In total, the tissue parts of 6 putative species were collected from G. asiatica, G. livida, G. lanceolate, G. catenata, G. turuturu and G. filicina. In order to evaluate their genetic diversity and then conserve them better, 40 microsatellites available for Grateloupia were used to evaluate their genetic diversity, and 11 microsatellites were found to be applicable to determine the genetic diversity of G. asiatica. It was found that the genetic diversity of G. asiatica around Qingdao was very rich. We suggested that the species of genus Grateloupia should be identified based on rbc L phylogenetic analysis before the diversity evaluation with microsatellites. The microsatellites should be developed for each species of Grateloupia so that their genetic diversity can be evaluated appropriately