Polymorphisms in DNA of Coprinus cinereus

Two types of DNA sequence polymorphisms were found among different geographic isolates of the basidiomycete fungus Coprinus einereus. These strains showed gains and losses of restriction enzyme recognition sites as well as extensive insertion/ deletion variation within DNA sequences present in a single copy per haploid genome. The same types of DNA sequence variants were also found within the tandemly repeated ribosomal RNA genes in these strains. There appears to be very little interspersed repetitive DNA in Coprinus, since all the randomly selected cloned DNA sequences studied in this survey were present only once in each haploid genome.