부산대학교 도서관

Cirsium setidens and Silybum marianum are medicinal plants that have been recently recognized as highly valuable sources of herbal drugs in Korea as well as worldwide. However, molecular markers for detecting these species in commercial food products have not yet been reported. In this study, we developed six species-specific primer sets for C. setidens and S. marianum using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) analysis, based on the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of four chloroplast genes (ndhA, ndhF, rbcL and ycf1). The developed primer pairs showed correlation coefficients for their target species only (R2 > 0.99), and their efficiencies and slopes were in the range of 93－103% and -3.23 to -3.49, respectively. A total of 12 commercial food products including seven for C. setidens and 5 for S. marianum were tested to evaluate the feasibility of the developed primer sets. We found that C. setidens was present in all the seven C. setidens commercial products, while presence of S. marianum was confirmed in four of five S. marianum products. Therefore, the developed species-specific primer sets could prove a useful tool for detecting the presence of C. setidens and S. marianum in commercial food products.