2017 ASHS Annual Conference

Cryptolepsis sanguinolenta is an herbaceous perennial plant indigenous to West and Central Africa. The roots are harvested and widely used in the preparation of herbal decoctions to treat malaria. The process of harvesting wild grown roots is unsustainable, and the plant is becoming more difficult to find as over harvesting has occurred. As part of a comprehensive program to conserve and domesticate C. sanguinolenta, we developed microsatellite markers to assess genetic diversity and population structure of wild plants. A genomic library was prepared, sequenced, and the raw reads were assembled de novo into contigs. Microsatellites were identified from the contigs and primers developed using BatchPrimer3. Seventy-five primer pairs were screened to discover 13 polymorphic microsatellite loci. In our initial study, 22 C. sanguinolenta samples were collected from 8 geographical locations. Alleles per locus ranged from 3 to 7 with a mean of 4.4. Expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.24 to 0.77, and all but one locus significantly deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Genetic differentiation mean was 0.06 among all loci, signifying relatively low genetic diversity among the samples included in the study. The 13 microsatellites that were developed will be used in more extensive studies to evaluate the genetic diversity and population structure of C. sanguinolenta, and will help conservation and domestication efforts for this important native medicinal plant in western and central Africa.