Phylogenetic analysis of Drosanthe (SPACH) ENDL. section belongs to Hypericum L. (Hypericaceae) genus by comparing the non-coding "trn" regions of the chloroplast genome

Hypericum L. is one of the nine genus of Hypericaceae family belongs to Malpighiales ordo in Angiospermae. It has been accepted as a medicinal plant since it has antibacterial, antimicrobial, antidepressant and antioxidant activities due to the presence of hypericin and pseudohypericin. In addition, it has been an important raw material in the flavour andfragrance industry as it contains essential oils. Recently, molecular and phylogenetic study of the genus has been accumulated to find out detailed intrageneric relationships, to have a new vision to the taxonomic problems arise from the morphologic similarity and differences, to identify the taxonomic delimitation between the taxons defined to be close to each other and to eliminate the present problems, as well. In this study, it is aimed that to determine thegenetic distances of Drosanthe (Spach) Endl. Section in Hypericum genus naturally distributed in different places in the World and also in Turkey, the infrageneric relationships and systematic and phylogenetic relationships by using non-coding transfer ribonücleic acid region (trnL-F) of chloroplast DNA sequence informations. DNA isolation fom the leaves of 58 individuals of 20 taxa, 9 taxa are endemic in the section, amplification of trnL-F region using e-f primers by PCR, and the identification of the sequence arrengement was carried out. The DATA was statistically evaluated by using Mega 5.1. software and phylogenetic tree was made by Maximum Likelihood method. The studied individuals are found not to have very different ratios of T,C,A and G bases, and they are identified to have similar base composition. A-T ratio of the individuals is 69.3%, and G-C ratio is 30.7% that is meaning that individuals are A-T rich. Furthermore,conserved region (C), variable region (V), informative region (Pi), identical pairs (ii), transitional (si) and transvertional (sv) numbers are found as 162, 6, 6, 144, 1 respectively. There is no distance value (0.00) between more than one group and the highest distance value (0.05) is identified to be between Group 11 (H. helianthemoides) and Group 21 (H. kamtschaticum). The nucleotide variety between groups and standart error (SE) are also found as 0.01. According to the phylogenetic tree prepared by using the sequence of trnL-F region, Drosanthe section members are likely to form a polyphletic group. The section members that are considerably different from each other morphologically are present at different clades with regard to studied molecular region conforming the high diversity rations between taxa.Keywords: Hypericum, Drosanthe, Chloroplast DNA, trnL-F Region, Polyphyletic.