Madina Rasulova Molecular Systematics of Nematodes Page 1

It is common to find both sexes of sting nematodes in the soil as they reproduce sexually (Fig. 1, B).
After mating the female lays eggs in pairs in the soil until the food is available. Juveniles hatch out of eggs
after about five days and try to find a root of a plant in order to survive by feeding on it. Juveniles undergo
three moults before becoming adults. The total life cycle of Belonolaimus from egg to reproducing adult
takes about 18-24 days. While feeding the nematodes inject enzymes into root tissues and suck plant
juices out via their stylet (Fig. 1, C) killing the meristematic cells which leads to cessation of growing of
root‟s tip (Grosser et al., 2007). This will lead to abnormal formation of roots and consequently result in
dramatically decrease of harvest.
Due to their significant damage to different crops, measures based on rotation with alfalfa have been
applied and were successful, while chemical nematicides could only reduce the number of sting
nematodes (Rau, 1963). That is the main reason why these nematodes were of great interest for many
scientists (Rau, 1961; Rau, 1963; Abu-Gharbieh et al., 1970; Cherry et al., 1997; Koenning et al., 2006;
Han et al., 2006; Grosser et al., 2007; Grosser et al., 2007) and more thoroughly studies, both
morphological and molecular, should be conducted in order to understand their evolutionary origination as
well as establish the most efficient method of struggle against these economically important pests.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
A partial nucleotide sequence of unknown Belonolaimus genus was chosen for the project work for
further analyzing using different molecular and phylogeny programs. The first step was to find out the
species of this genus as well as the type of this given sequence in NCBI GenBank by BLAST of
nucleotides (Appendix, Figure 4).
According to NCBI GenBank, the studied gene was complete sequence of ITS1 region as well as
contained other partial parts in both ends. Two ITS regions of rDNA, which are located between 18S SSU
and 5.8S for ITS1 and 5.8S and 28S LSU for ITS2, are particularly well-suited for species and population
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