RESUMEN
Objective: This study aimed to discriminate between Eupatorii Herba and its adulterants in order to guarantee the quality and clinical curative effect of this medicinal material. Methods: Genomic DNA extracted from Eupatorii Herba was used as templates. The internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of nuclear ribosomal DNA was amplified. Sequence assembly and consensus sequence generation were performed by CodonCode Aligner. The intraspecific and interspecific genetic distances of Eupatorii Herba and its adulterants were computed by MEGA5 and the phylogenetic tree was constructed using the neighbor-joining (NJ) method. Results: The length of ITS2 sequence of Eupatorii Herba was 218 bp. The maximum intraspecific genetic distance (K2P distance) of Eupatorii Herba was 0.0092. The minimum interspecific genetic distance of Eupatorii Herba and its adulterants was 0.024. The NJ trees showed that the ITS2 sequence would be used to identify Eupatorii Herba and its adulterants. Con-clusion: ITS2 sequence was able to identify Eupatorii Herba and its adulterants correctly and it provided a new technique to ensure clinical safety in utilization of traditional Chinese medicines.