AFLP Fingerprinting of Tricoderma reesei Strains

Abstract

Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), a novel molecular fingerprinting technique, modi- fied by using one PstI restriction enzyme, has been applied to assess the genomic diversity of Trichoderma reesei strains and mutants deriving from different world collections. The genetic relationship among all AFLP pattern based on the Jaccard's similarity coefficient were transformed to build an unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean dendrogram. The statistical analysis of obtained results enabled the classification of T. reesei strains into two main clusters. Nine of them were classified as group I and next four strains into group II. The analysis revealed the existence of one subgroup composed of 291 and 292 strains within group II. Six subgroups were present within group I, the first formed by 289; the second com- posed by 290 and 298; the third formed by 300; the fourth including 293 and 294; the fifth formed by 296; and the sixth composed by 295 and 299. In general, the AFLP analysis has differentiated all strains tested in this study. AFLPs revealed the lower level of diversity among group II, whereas for strains in group I, the level of diversity was higher.