National Cheng Kung University Department of Life Sciences professor Chiang Tzen-yuh has established the genetic fingerprint of the wild jelly fig in Yushan National Park, providing a means of identifying illegally harvested fruit.
The seeds of the jelly fig, indigenous to Taiwan, are used to make a delicious iced jelly, sold on the streets in summer to help people cool down. Since the Yushan National Park Headquarters recently discovered that a patch of wild jelly fig on the Nanxi Forest Trail had been poached, and as the fruit has become scarce in the wild, they turned to Chiang to research methods of preservation of the species.
Chiang completed his interim report Oct. 20. The data included 38 trees, with molecular analysis of microsatellite DNA from each. A specific DNA sequence that can be used as a marker was identified, and a molecular fingerprint recorded for each of the trees.
Researchers stress that they are trying to find a workable method and technology to set up more molecular fingerprints, so that the technique can help establish a database to be used broadly in the future, and therefore provide conservation workers with the means to reliably identify species and their origins.
The park's conservation office said the molecular fingerprints for the plants are just like human fingerprints. Since living things are in the process of evolving, individuals show differences in their heredity. Using estimates of the degree of difference between samples, and analyzing the data, researchers can help make conservation work more efficient.
(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times Oct. 21.)