Molecular taxonomic identification of a Silene plant regenerated from Late Pleistocene fruit material

The article presents the results of taxonomic identification of two Silene L. somaclones regenerated in vitro from Late Pleistocene and the extant fruit material. Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on two DNA markers (nrDNA ITS region and cpDNA rps16 intron) have been conducted. The analyses were carried out separately for each marker and included sequences of 31 herbarium specimens of additional nine Silene species from Siberia, the Russian Far East and northeast of European Russia as well as those of a worldwide set of Silene species from GenBank. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that both clones (the ancient Silent , SS1 and the recent Silene SS2) belong to Silene linnaeana Vorosch. group being part of the section Physqychnis (Benth.) Bocquet. The morphological and molecular analysis of both Silene clones yielded the adequate results of these two methods. These results confirm taxonomic identification of the ancient Silene clone by B. Oxel man et al. (in: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109(41): E2735, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207774109) on rejecting previous determination of the ancient Silene as S. stenophylla Ledab.