Telomeric fingerprinting of the white root rot fungus, Rosellinia necatrix: a useful tool for strain identification.

ABSTRACT

The telomere associated DNA sequence pTel46, which was isolated from Coprinus cinereus, was hybridized with Rosellinia necatrix genomic DNA. The DNA fragments hybridized with pTel46 were more sensitive to Bal31 nuclease. This result suggests that the DNA fragments hybridized with pTel46 were located at the end of chromosomes in R. necatrix. Telomere-linked restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was found in strains of R. necatrix isolated from various field and single ascospores. Thus, this marker appears to be an excellent tool to show the great polymorphism of R. necatrix. However, RFLP could not be found among several field isolated strains belonging to the same mycelial compatibility group (MCG) isolated in the same field. Therefore the strains belonging to the same MCG might be the same strain that could be anastomosed with each other without cell death except for strain W718 carrying a double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) virus. Therefore the RFLP corresponded to a MCG group, and none of the strains belonging to the same MCG group showed different RFLP in R. necatrix. Moreover, the presence of a kind of dsRNA virus might imply anastomosis between compatible strains.