Development of novel polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based microsatellite markers in Armillaria gallica by cross-species amplification and species-specific cloning.

Cross-species PCR amplification of Armillaria mellea group taxa with previously reported A. ostoyae microsatellite markers, indicative of flanking sequence conservation, was exploited for the species-specific isolation of simple sequence repeat (SSR) motifs from A. gallica. Six SSR motifs were sequence characterized from cloned PCR fragments generated with primers previously developed from A. ostoyae. Five novel primer pairs, designed from motif flanking regions, allowed for improved, efficient amplification in this species. One original A. ostoyae primer pair was used directly. Polymorphims were observed at wide geographical levels only. Relative cross-species amplification intensities generally supported the currently accepted molecular phylogeny of this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]