Project:

Exploring the Phylogeny of the lamiaceae family of plants

Students:

Queniea Kirsheh, Jaylynn Castro, Vidya Dwarka, Orianna Herrera

School:

St. Raymond Academy for girls,

Mentors:

Marianne Williams

Abstract:

The Lamiaceae refers to a family of plants that belong to the mint, deadnettle, or sage family, consisting of approximately 6,900 to 7,200 species (Xu & Chang, 2017). Many of us use these plants for cooking as spices in our day-to-day lives: basil, oregano, thyme, sage, mint, rosemary, marjoram, etc. Ornamentals include salvia and lavender. Medicinal plants include catnip, bee balm, wild dagga and oriental motherwort. We are interested in determining how closely related these plants are. We will construct a phylogenetic tree to demonstrate their relationships. Through DNA Barcoding, we can identify and compare each species at the matK and rbcl genes. Using the sequencing results to build a phylogenetic tree, we can determine how closely related the family of plants are at the genus and species level.

Team samples:

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