ABSTRACT
This study aimed at exploring a fast method to accurately identify the medicinal insect Vespa mandarinia Smith from its adulterants using DNA barcode and COI sequences.The extracted DNAs from V.mandarinia and its adulterants V.soror were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced bilaterally based on COI barcode sequence investigation.The information of the COI sequences of V.mandarinia and V.soror were gathered from GenBank.All the sequences were compared and analyzed,and their intraspecific and interspecific genetic distances were calculated using MEGA 6.06.In addition,the phylogenetic tree was established with neighbor-joining (NJ) method.As a result,the COI sequences of V.mandarinia and V.soror were successfully amplified.The minimum interspecific distance between V.mandarinia and its adulterants was 0.152 ± 0.017,being considerably larger than the maximal intraspecific distance between V.mandarinia,0.009±0.004.The constructed phylogenetic tree showed an independent branch for each species.It was concluded that the DNA barcode based on COI sequence can efficiently identify V.mandarinia and its adulterants.This study provided an innovative tool for the quality control and market regulation of Chinese materia medica,securing the safe medication of V.mandarinia.