Hello!
I want to do a aphid-barcoding and was thinking of using the whole aphid and the standard primers for insects: LCO1490 and HCO2198.
Now I wonder if I might get problems, if there's plant DNA inside the guts of the aphid.
With bigger insects I have just used legs or other parts without guts so far. Since plants use Cytochrome Oxidase too, I'm concerned a little bit.
Does someone have experience with it - and if I will have problems: will I have to dissect the tiny aphid or will I at least get different sizes of bands on a gel and could solve this with cutting the right one out?
Thank you very much in advance!
Best regards,
Christina
There should not be any problem, as those are universal primers for invertebrates mt COI gene.
Thank you for your answer!
I started the process so far and even though the aphids were smaller than some legs I already ran through barcoding, I had very strong and clear bands. No extra plant-bands :) Obviously the sequences differ enough between invertebrates and plants.
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