Genetic Analysis of the Diamondback Moth, Plutella xylostella, Collected from China Using Mitochondrial COI Gene Sequence

Abstract

The diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, is notorious because of its extensive potential and actual dispersal ability. Previously, the Korean populations of P. xylostella was extensively collected and analyzed for their genetic population structure using a portion of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). One of the postulated characteristics on population genetic structure of the species includes the presence of heterogeneous haplotypes, possibly possessed by some dispersed ones from neighboring countries. In this study, we sequenced ten P. xylostella collected from China (~2,000 km away from the middle part of Korea) to know the genetic relationships of these to the Korean P. xylostella. Sequence analysis of the identical portion of COI gene resulted in five haplotypes with the sequence divergence ranging from 0.5% (two nucleotides) to 1.1% (five nucleotides) among them and from 0.7% (three) to 2.5% (11) to the pre-existing 52 Korean haplotypes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the Chinese P. xylostella were neither clearly separated from the Korean haplotypes nor clustered with one heterogeneous Korean haplotype. This result reinforces the significance of gene flow in this species and suggests to exclude the possibility that the heterogeneous Korean haplotypes may have emigrated from China, where our samples were obtained, although further extensive investigation is required.