Analisi del genoma mediante marcatori molecolari. II. Principali applicazioni.

Various methods from molecular biology reveal DNA sequence polymorphism that can be used as highly informative markers for investigating the structure and dynamics of genomes at the level of species, populations and individuals. These methods include restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - based molecular markers. As a matter of fact, all plant DNA polymorphism assays are powerful tools not only for characterizing and investigating germplasm resources and genetic relatedness, but also for linkage mapping, gene targeting and cloning, assisted breeding and fingerprinting. This paper deals with some case studies concerning the major applications of molecular markers in the topics mentioned above. Theoretical considerations and practical results on genetic map construction and genetic diversity estimation are reported and discussed with particular reference to crop plants (maize), vegetables (chicory), forages (fescue) and trees (willow). Methods for the identification of genetically modified plants (GMP) such as maize-Bt and Roundup-ready soybean are also included.