Analysis of some Capparis L. accessions from Turkey based on IRAP and seed protein patterns

Genus Capparis as evergreen shrubs, small trees and lianas in the family Capparaceae occur over a wide range of habitat in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world comprising 350 species approximately. In the unrevised APG II system, it is included in Brassicaceace. Capparis spinosa L., C. ovata Desf., C.leucophylla DC., C. mucronifolia Boiss., C. cartillaginea Decne, C. decidua (Fosk) Edgew. are the common species in Mediterranean, Balkans and West Asian countries. Five species are native for Mediterranean region (Inocencio, 2006). The plant as a straggling shrubs has simple entire leaves, with or without stipular spines. Flowers showy, with 4 sepals, 4 petals, very many free stamens and an ovary borne on a stipe becoming much elongated in fruit. Fruit is a berry-like, manyseeded capsule (Coode,1965). C. ovata andC. spinosa as native species have large distributional patterns in Turkey with three accepted varieties for each species. Capparis has been used since the ancient times as medicinal plant and food. Many species have recorded uses in herbalism and folk medicine.The number of papers published on this topic so far.The fruits rich in micronutrients and flower buds are widely used pickled as a vegetable condiment (Aktan et al. 1981). Alkaloids, lipids, flavonoids, glucosinolates, cancer preventing agents and biopesticides were detected in biochemical analysis on Capparis. Antitumoral activity was detected in the extracts from the flower buds containing antioxidants compounds in some species (Venugopal et al. 2011). Antiproliferative, antifungal and HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitory activities of a protein in the seeds of Capparis spinosa(Lam & Ng 2009), antiinflammatory and anti-thrombotic activities in the buds and fruits of Capparis ovata (Bektaş et al. 2012), and antidiabetic and antioxidant activities in Capparis decidua (Zia-Ul-Haqet al. 2011) were also reported. Many studies on the flavanoid contents (Ferheenet al. 2013), proximate compositions and fatty acid contents (Özcan & Akgül 1998; Vyas et al. 2009), mineral compositions (Özcan, 2005) and organic acids of the fruits (Ren et al. 2012), glucosinolates, fatty acid, sterol, and tocopherol composition of seed oils from Capparis species (Matthaus & Özcan 2005) were previously reported. The extracts obtained from the leaves, roots and dry offshoots are used in cosmetic preparates, additives in perfumery and as regenerative agent in hair loss. On the other hand, Capparis from arid regions are highly useful in reforestation and landscape gardening in addition to preserve agricultural land and prevent soil erosion with large extensive root systems that penetrate deepley into the ground.Capparis as a salt tolerant plant flourishing also in saline hard planes can adapt harsh environmental and climatic conditions and are cultivated in some mariginal fields such as arid and semi-arid regions as alternative crop plants. Some species and varieties as economic plants have been cultivated in Mediterranean countries including Spain, Morocco, Italy, Turkey and Greece. For efficient use of the genetic resources of Capparis, molecular marker assisted breeding programs which select the eligible genes distributing among the populations growing in various habitat conditions are needed to improve the cultivars with high product potential. This genus is also important from taxonomical point of view, because the existence of six varieties from two species in Turkey reflect high intraspecific variability. Therefore, observation within and among populational variations, delimitation at infraspecific level, and determination of taxonomical and phylogeographical relations much strictly are fundamental for understanding evolutionary process in addition to development of conservation strategies. Apart from many published works using morphological descriptors, limited number of studies for estimating the genetic diversity of Capparis species were published using molecular markers including RAPD (Vyas et al. 2009; AbdelMawgood et al. 2010; Kumar et al. 2013), AFLP (Inocencio et al. 2005) and ISSRs (Saifi et al. 2011; Bhoyar et al. 2012) which are very promising genetic markers for caper identification and population genetic studies. Genomic sequences of novel 18S ribosomal RNA (Banaras et al. 2012) and newly isolated beta-tubulin genes (Aman et al. 2013) have been also used in the phylogenetic relations of some species including Capparis.In a genetic diversity observations of some Turkish Capparis populations based on RAPD markers, genetic distances among the populations were very low and greater intraspecific variation in C. spinosa L. than C. ovata Desf. was recently reported from Turkey (Özbek & Kara 2013). InterRetrotransposons Amplified Polymorphisms (IRAPs) as an alternative valuable retrotransposon-based markers are also used to detect genotypes, measure diversity or reconstruct phylogeny (Flavell et al. 1999; Kalendar et al. 1999; Kumar & Hirochika 2001). As mobile genetic elements, the copy number of retrotransposons was reported to vary even among closely related plant taxa (Leigh et al. 2003; Tenaillon et al. 2011). Retrotransposons are divided into two groups depending on the presence/absence of long terminal repeats (LTRs). Within the LTR retrotransposons, two subclasses, Ty1-copia and the Ty3- gypsy, are particularly abundant and well analyzed in plants at different taxonomical categories (Park et al. 2007; Ma et al. 2008). Retrotransposon based molecular markers are excellent tools for detecting genetic diversity within a species (Kolano et al. 2013) and genomic changes associated with retrotransposon activity in abiotic stress conditions (Fan et al. 2014). There are many applications of multiple retrotransposon families for genetic analysis such as mapping, fingerprinting and markerassisted selection and evolutionary studies. But no any study was reported on the usage of retrotransposons for detecting of genetic diversity of Capparis. On the other hand, protein electrophoresis has been widely used in germplasm discrimination (Iqbal et al. 2003) and evaluation of agronomic traits (Ghafoor & Ahmad 2005)based on genetic differences in seed storage protein comparison. Variations of quantitative traits are significantly associated with protein sub-units expressed by individual genes or gene clusters scattered throughout the genome. Observation on the correlation of DNA-based markers and protein patterns provide useful and reliable tools in the comparative genomics/proteomics as expressional fingerprinting of the germplasms. There is a need to use some reliable and reproducible marker combinations to understand the relations and circumscriptions of Capparis taxa much strictly, which have probably great variability in Anatolian gene pool. In the framework of this study, it was aimed to determine infrageneric variations and geographical relations within Capparis accessions collected from its native range in Turkey based on IRAP and seed protein band patterns, in addition to contribute molecular identification of the germplasm collection representing different habitat conditions.