TIRUPATI: Sri Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam (SPMVV) has completed DNA barcoding of 33 indigenous silkworm species. With the experience gained in DNA barcoding research, the university is now planning to apply the same method for flora and fauna in Seshachalam forest or in coastal Andhra Pradesh.Actually, the women’s university started research to develop a comprehensive data warehouse from bio-metric, DNA barcoding and micro satellite marker profiles of silkworm (Bombyx Mori, the scientific name) in 2014 and established a repository for the silkworm species.
Using the knowledge, it has developed futuristic silkworm breeding strategies and generated based on the breeds of economic importance, special features and various other parameters as potential parents in designing need based breeding plans for several agro climatic zones across the country.Prof DM Mamatha, Registrar of women’s university, who is the main researcher of the prestigious project, said, “We have developed technology based on GUI automatic recognition system to identify silkworm cocoons and silk filaments by their external and critical morphological patterns.
The system has been developed using image processing and soft computing algorithms. It enables exact identification of the silkworm cocoons and silk filaments by any lay person without any technical expertise. The DNA barcoding is an advanced approach that employs a small fragment of DNA, a portion of a single gene, to provide a unique identifier - a DNA barcode - for each living. Using these DNA barcodes, it will be possible to identify any organism, be it juvenile or adult, male or female, large or small, from only a tiny piece of tissue.
This is vastly more efficient than traditional approaches which are often based on the detailed examination of specific body parts and which typically require interpretation by trained experts. In addition, because DNA barcoding quickly distinguishes new species, it will greatly accelerate the rate of their discovery.
In addition, DNA Barcoding also gives the exact molecular phylogeny between the species which help the breeder take rational decisions in selecting the species for future breeding programmes.
“Development of microsatellite markers for the cocoon and silk producing breeds will still provide us exact genetic picture for the selection of potential parents for future breeding strategies,” she explained.
Microsatellite markers
The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD)has established the genome-wide analysis of microsatellite markers of silkworm and high density molecular linkage maps have been constructed for silkworm employing a variety of DNA markers, she said.Currently, efforts are being made to make use of this enormous marker data by different research groups for marker assisted selection, to develop silkworm strains with high cocoon yield and enhanced silk quality.