Abstract: Genomic DNA polymorphisms are very useful for tracing genetic traits and studying biological diversity among species. Here, we present a method we call the “diversity suppression-subtractive hybridization array” for effectively profiling genomic DNA polymorphisms. The method first obtains the subtracted gDNA fragments between any two species by suppression subtraction hybridization (SSH) to establish a subtracted gDNA library, from which diversity SSH arrays are created with the selected subtracted clones. The diversity SSH array hybridizes with the DIG-labeled genomic DNA of the organism to be assayed. Six closely related Dendrobium species were studied as model samples. Four Dendrobium species as testers were used to perform SSH. A total of 617 subtracted positive clones were obtained from four Dendrobium species, and the average ratio of positive clones was 80.3%. We demonstrated that the average percentage of polymorphic fragments of pairwise comparisons of four Dendrobium species was up to 42.4%. A dendrogram of the relatedness of six Dendrobium species was produced according to their polymorphic profiles. The results revealed that the diversity SSH array is a highly effective platform for profiling genomic DNA polymorphisms and dendrograms.(Author for correspondenceTel: 025 8361 9983；Fax: 025 8361 9983；E-mail: zhlu@seu.edu.cn.)

Key words: dendrogram, diversity suppression-subtractive hybridization array, genomic DNA polymorphisms.