Molecular identification of eight ethnomedicinal plants used by the indigenous communities of Bangladesh through the partial genome sequencing of three plastid markers

The effectiveness of plant-based therapies depends on precise botanical identification. However, tribal communities and practitioners sometimes misclassify medicinal plants due to a lack of scientific understanding. Plants cannot always be identified simply by morphology; the DNA-based approach uses a small segment of genomic DNA to authenticate medicinal plant species. Many tribal communities in Bangladesh have utilized plants for healing purposes for centuries. Therefore, this research used DNA sequences to identify Bangladeshi ethnomedicinal plants. DNA was extracted from the fresh leaves of eight important medicinal plants using the AddPrep Genomic DNA Extraction Kit and stored at − 20 °C. Three important loci ( matK , rbcL and psbA-trnH ) were amplified using PCR, and the sequences of these regions were analyzed for identification. rbcL and matK showed amplification success rates of 100% and 75% respectively, while for psbA-trnH the level was 50%, which subsequently led to the production of a total of 18 novel sequences. To validate the taxonomic identity of the samples, a MEGABLAST sequence comparison was performed, with nine species-level (50%) and nine genus-level (50%) identifications confirmed. The neighbor-joining method was used to construct four phylogenetic trees. The sequences obtained from the plant (leaf) samples and downloaded sequences from NCBI were employed, with the topologies of the trees being identical. Our findings demonstrate that partial genome sequencing is a viable way of identifying medicinal plants and closely related species utilizing the three plastid loci rbcL , matK and psbA-trnH , which are efficient and feasible DNA markers for plant authenticity.