An Overview for Molecular Markers in Plants

Abstract

A molecular marker is a molecule contained within a sample taken from an organism or other matter. The development of molecular techniques for genetic analysis has led to a great contribution to our knowledge of plant genetics and our understanding of the structure and behavior of various genomes in plants. Recently, functional molecular markers have been developed to detect the presence of major genes from the analysis of pedigreed data in absence of molecular information. DNA markers have developed into many systems based on different polymorphism-detecting techniques or methods such as RFLP, AFLP, RAPD, SSR, SNP, etc. A new class of very useful DNA markers called genic molecular markers utilizing the ever-increasing archives of gene sequence information being accumulated under the EST sequencing projects on a large number of plant species. Functional markers are derived from polymorphic sequences, and are more likely to be involved in phenotypic trait variation. Based on this conceptual framework, the marker systems discussed below are all (gene)-targeted markers, which have the potential to become functional. These markers being part of the cDNA/EST-sequences, are expected to represent the functional component of the genome i.e., gene(s), in contrast to all other random DNA based markers that are developed/generated from the anonymous genomic DNA sequences/domains irrespective of their genic content/information. Especially I sited Poczai et al' reviews, advances in plant gene-targeted and functional markers. Their reviews may be some useful information to study molecular markers in plants.