Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationship in Korean Strains of Lentinus lepideus Based on PCR Polymorphism

Lentinus lepideus, known as train wrecker fungus, has been used for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Recently, commercial cultivation technique and a new cultivar of the mushroom were developed. To investigate the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship for identifying the mushroom strains and cultivar, one commercial and 13 strains of Lentinus lepideus from different geographical regions of Korea were analyzed by ITS regions of rDNA and RAPD of genomic DNA. Three strains of Lentinus edodes were also used for the analysis. The size of the ITS1 and ITS2 regions of rDNA from the different strains varied from 173 to 179 bp and 203 to 205 bp, respectively. The sequence of ITS1 was more variable than that of ITS2, while the 5.8S sequences were identical with 156 base pairs. A phylogenetic tree based on the ITS region sequences indicated that selected strains could be classified into four clusters, while 3 strains of L. edodes was divided into a new cluster. Ten primers out of 20 arbitrary primers used in the RAPD-PCR efficiently amplified the genomic DNA. The numbers of amplified DNA bands varied with the primers and strains, with polymorphic DNA fragments in the range from 0.2 to 2.6 kb. The results showed that phylogenetic relationship among Korean strains of Lentnus lepideus is high, but genetic diversity is low.