High genetic diversity in wild culinary-medicinal wood ear mushroom, Auricularia polytricha (Mont.) Sacc., in tropical China revealed by ISSR analysis.

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Citation abstract

The genetic diversity of 40 wild Auricularia polytricha strains within ten natural populations in tropical China and five cultivated strains were analyzed by using twelve inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers. At the species level, the percentage of polymorphic loci (P) = 99.8%, the effective number of alleles (Ne) = 1.3569, Nei's gene diversity (H) = 0.2398, Shannon information index (I) = 0.3896, and total genetic diversity (Ht)= 0.2346 indicate a high level of genetic diversity in wild A. polytricha. At the population level of the wild fungus, P = 43.51%, Ne = 1.2675, H = 0.1702, I = 0.2504. However, the genetic diversity of cultivated strains was the lowest of all populations (Ne = 1.1584, H = 0.0940, I = 0.1440). A moderate degree of genetic differentiation (G(st) = 0.347) among the sampled wild populations was detected based on Nei's gene diversity analysis, suggesting that 65.3% of variation existed within this population. The high genetic variation level within wild populations may mostly result from a low level of gene flow (N = 0.9408) and random genetic drift.