• Advances in Traditional Medicine
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.52-58
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• 2000

In order to develop convenient and reproducible methods for identification of ginseng drugs at a DNA level, RAPD (randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) and PCR-RFLP (PCR-Restriction fragment length polymorphism) analysis were applied within Panax species. To authenticate Panax ginseng betvyeen Chinese and Korean ginseng population, RAPD analysis were carried out using 20 mer-random primer. The similarity coefficients among the DNA of ginseng plants analyzed were low, ranging from 0.197 to 0.491. In addition, using PCR-RFLP analysis, very different fingerprints were obtained within Korean ginseng plants. These results suggest that these methods are able to authenticate the concerned Panax species. Broader application of this approach to authenticate other morphologically similar medicinal materials is rationalized.