Strain typing in Lentinula edodes by polymerase chain reaction

Abstract

Differences among strains of Lentinula edodes were examined by the polymerase chain reaction using conserved rDNA-ITS sequences as specific primers (rDNA-PCR) and an M13 forward 24-mer sequencing primer as the arbitrary primer (AP-PCR). For rDNA-PCR, the ITS2 regions of three strains sequenced by the dideoxy chain-termination reaction revealed deletion/insertion and base substitution. For AP-PCR, almost every tested strain had its unique DNA profile with some DNA bands common to all 15 strains tested. The complexity of the DNA profile does not correlate with the monokaryotic or dikaryotic nature of the strain. The cultivated dikaryotic strains showed heterogeneous genomic fingerprints. Also, polymorphic DNA markers were generated. We demonstrate here that AP-PCR can be conveniently applied for strain typing.