rDNA analyses as an aid to the taxonomy of species of Ganoderma

As part of research to implement methods for the identification of Ganoderm a species, this paper describes the use of PCR coupled to restriction diges tions, single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) and direct sequenci ng to assay rDNA polymorphism in South American collections of Ganoderma. T he aim of the present study was to determine whether morphologically define d groups could be discriminated by molecular markers and to examine ITS seq uence variation. Nineteen isolates of subgenus Ganoderma representing seven morphological taxa, and thirty isolates of subgenus Elfoingia representing three taxa, were studied. ITS I and IT II regions of twenty-one isolates w ere sequenced and were cladistically analyzed. Seven additional sequences w ere downloaded from EMBL/Genbank for comparison. In general, agreement betw een groupings delimited by restriction patterns, SSCP of ITS I and ITS II w as evident. Gene trees derived from ITS I, ITS II and from a combined data set, were obtained and compared. Agreement between molecular and morphologi cal data was clear at the subgeneric lever; however, at the specific level, this relationship was difficult to visualize.