Dissimilarity in the Nuclear Ribosomal DNA Internal Transcribed Spacer Regions of Haplophyllum spp. Founded in Ashdagh Mountain, Sangaw, Kurdistan of Iraq.

Studying and understanding the changes in the molecular sequences of plants are important to better identification and classifying the species. Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions are consider an informative genetic sequence to find out the variation among species of the same genus. In this study, ITS regions of Haplophyllum collected in Ashdagh Mountain were amplified, analyzed, and compared with reference species gathered from gene bank. The results showed that the collected species was closely related to Haplophyllum blanchei and Haplophyllum tuberculatum. In addition, there were differences in the number of the base pairs in the ITS1 region between Haplophyllum sp. and H. blanchei and H. tuberculatum. The transition to transversion ratio between Haplophyllum sp. and H. tuberculatum was lower (=1) than with other species. The results reveals that the studied plant is could be a new species in Iraq. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first molecular taxonomic study done to identify Haplophyllum species in Ashdagh mountain in Sangaw/Suleimani. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]