Detection of intra- and interspecific variation of the dry rot fungus Serpula lacrymansby PCR-RFLP and RAPD analysis

We investigated a genotype-based assay to discriminate the dry rot fungi Serpula lacrymans. DNAs were extracted from 74 isolates from the northern half of Japan, and internal transcribed spacers (ITS) were amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Genotypes of isolates were checked by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) using two enzymes, TaqI and HhaI. Among the 74 isolates identified as S. lacrymansin terms of morphologic features, 5 isolates were shown to have been misidentified. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was conducted in order to detect the intraspecific diversity of S. lacrymansisolated in Japan. Because no relation between geographical origin and genetic distances was observed, the intraspecific diversity of S. lacrymansis suggested to be small.